The Project Gutenberg eBook, Montreal 1535-1914, Volume II (of 2), by William Henry Atherton

MONTREAL 1535-1914 UNDER BRITISH RULE 1760-1914

By WILLIAM HENRY ATHERTON, Ph. D.

Qui manet in patria et patriam cognoscere temnit Is mihi non civis, sed peregrinus erit

VOLUME II

ILLUSTRATED

THE S. J. CLARKE PUBLISHING COMPANY MONTREAL VANCOUVER CHICAGO 1914

PREFACE

The history of “Montreal Under British Rule” is the “Tale of Two Cities”, of a dual civilization with two main racial origins, two mentalities, two main languages, and two main religions. It is the story of two dominant races growing up side by side under the same flag, jealously preserving their identities, at some times mistrusting one another, but on the whole living in marvelous harmony though not always in unison, except on certain well defined common grounds of devotion to Canada and the Empire, and of the desire of maintaining the noble traditions and the steady progress of their city.

Montreal of today is a cosmopolitan city, but it is preponderatingly French-Canadian in its population. This fact makes it necessary to give especial attention to the history of two-thirds of the people. There has, therefore, been an effort in these pages, while recognizing this, to respect the rights of the minority, and open-handed justice has been observed.

The position of a dispassionate onlooker has been taken as far as possible in the narration of the domestic struggles in the upbuilding of the city through the crucial turnstiles of Canadian history under British rule—the Interregnum, the establishment of civil government, the Quebec act, the Constitutional act, the Union, and the Confederation. This attitude of equipoise, while disappointing to partisans, has been justified if it helps to present an unbiased account of different periods of history and serves to maintain the city’s motto of “Concordia Salus”—a doctrine which has been upheld throughout this work. Tout savoir c’est tout pardonner.

Charles Dickens in his visit to Montreal in 1842 observed that it was a “heart-burning town.” There is no need to renew the occasion for such a title in the city of today.

It only remains to express thankful indebtedness to those, too numerous to mention, who have assisted in the compilation of certain information otherwise difficult of access, and also to thank a number of friends, prominent citizens of Montreal, who in connection with the movement for city improvement and the inculcation of civic pride have encouraged the author to embark on the laborious but pleasant task of preparing this second volume of the history of “Montreal Under British Rule,” as a sequel to the first volume of “Montreal Under the French Régime.”

WILLIAM HENRY ATHERTON.

December, 1914.

NOTE TO THE READER

In presenting the second volume to the reader the writer would observe that its first part deals mainly with the story of city progress under the various changes of the political and civic constitution, with certain chapters of supplementary annals and sidelights of general progress. The second part treats in detail, for the sake of students and as a reference book, the special advancement of the city through its various eras in religion, education, culture, population, public service, hospital, charitable, commercial, financial, transportation and city improvement growth, and in so doing the author has desired to present the histories of the chief associations that have in the past or in the present been mainly responsible for the upbuilding of a no mean city.

W.H.A.

CONTENTS

PART I

CONSTITUTIONAL AND CIVIC PROGRESS

CHAPTER I

THE EXODUS FROM MONTREAL

1760

“THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH, GIVING PLACE TO NEW”

CHAPTER II

THE INTERREGNUM

1760-1763

MILITARY GOVERNMENT

CHAPTER III

THE DEFINITIVE TREATY OF PARIS

1763

THE NEW CIVIL GOVERNMENT

CHAPTER IV

CIVIC GOVERNMENT UNDER JUSTICES OF THE PEACE

1764

CHAPTER V

THE PRELIMINARY STRUGGLE FOR AN ASSEMBLY

THE BRITISH MERCHANTS OF MONTREAL

CHAPTER VI

THE QUEBEC ACT OF 1774

THE NOBLESSE OF THE DISTRICT OF MONTREAL

CHAPTER VII

THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR OF 1775

MONTREAL THE SEAT OF DISCONTENT

CHAPTER VIII

MONTREAL BESIEGED

1775

THE SECOND CAPITULATION

CHAPTER IX

MONTREAL, AN AMERICAN CITY SEVEN MONTHS UNDER CONGRESS

1776

THE CONGRESS ARMY EVACUATES MONTREAL

CHAPTER X

THE ASSEMBLY AT LAST

1776-1791

THE CONSTITUTIONAL ACT OF 1791

CHAPTER XI

THE FUR TRADERS OF MONTREAL

THE GREAT NORTH WEST COMPANY

CHAPTER XII

FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY DESIGNS

MONTREAL THE SEAT OF JACOBINISM

CHAPTER XIII

THE AMERICAN INVASION OF 1812

MONTREAL AND CHATEAUGUAY

FRENCH CANADIAN LOYALTY

CHAPTER XIV

SIDE LIGHTS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS

1776-1825

CHAPTER XV

BUREAURACY vs. DEMOCRACY

THE PROPOSED UNION OF THE CANADAS

CHAPTER XVI

MURMURS OF REVOLUTION

RACE AND CLASS ANTAGONISM

CHAPTER XVII

MONTREAL IN THE THROES OF CIVIL WAR

1837-1838

CHAPTER XVIII

PROCLAMATION OF THE UNION

1841

HOME RULE FOR THE COLONY

CHAPTER XIX

RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT UNDER THE UNION

CHAPTER XX

THE MUNICIPALITY OF MONTREAL

CHAPTER XXI

SUPPLEMENTAL ANNALS AND SIDELIGHTS OF SOCIAL LIFE UNDER THE UNION

CHAPTER XXII

CONSTITUTIONAL LIFE UNDER CONFEDERATION

FEDERAL AND PROVINCIAL INFLUENCE

CHAPTER XXIII

SUPPLEMENTAL ANNALS AND SIDELIGHTS OF SOCIAL LIFE

UNDER CONFEDERATION

1867-1914

PART II

SPECIAL PROGRESS

CHAPTER XXIV

RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

CHAPTER XXV

OTHER RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS

ANGLICANISM—EARLY BEGINNINGS—FIRST “CHRIST CHURCH”—THE BISHOPS OF MONTREAL—HISTORY OF EARLY ANGLICAN CHURCHES.

PRESBYTERIANISM—ST. GABRIEL’S STREET CHURCH—ITS OFFSHOOTS—THE FREE KIRK MOVEMENT—THE CHURCH OF TODAY.

METHODISM—FIRST CHAPEL ON ST. SULPICE, 1809—THE DEVELOPMENT OF METHODIST CHURCHES.

THE BAPTISTS—FIRST CHAPEL OF ST. HELEN STREET—FURTHER GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT—PRESENT CHURCHES.

CONGREGATIONALISM—CANADA EDUCATION AND HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY—FIRST CHURCH ON ST. MAURICE STREET—CHURCHES OF TODAY.

UNITARIANISM—FIRST SERMON IN CANADA, 1832—ST. JOSEPH STREET CHAPEL—THE CHURCHES OF THE MESSIAH.

HEBREWS—SHEARITH ISRAEL—SHAAC HASHOMOYIM AND OTHER CONGREGATIONS.

SALVATION ARMY—ITS GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT.

OTHER DENOMINATIONS.

CHAPTER XXVI

1760-1841

SCHOOL SYSTEM OF MONTREAL BEFORE THE CESSION

CHAPTER XXVII

1841-1914

THE SCHOOL SYSTEM AFTER THE UNION

THE RISE OF THE “SCHOOL COMMISSIONS OF MONTREAL”

EDUCATION AFTER THE REBELLION—THE EDUCATIONAL ACT OF 1846—THE PERSONNEL OF THE FIRST CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT COMMISSIONERS—NORMAL SCHOOLS—THE AMENDED SCHOOL ACT OF 1868-69—THE CHARTER—THE PROTESTANT HIGH SCHOOL—THE PROTESTANT COMMISSIONERS, 1869-1914—HISTORY OF SCHOOLS—LIST OF CATHOLIC COMMISSIONERS, 1869-1914—PRESENT SCHOOLS UNDER COMMISSION—INDEPENDENT CATHOLIC SCHOOL COMMISSIONS—THE ORGANIZATIONS COOPERATING WITH THE CENTRAL COMMISSION—“NUNS”—“BROTHERS”—“LAITY.”

CHAPTER XXVIII

UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT

I. M’GILL UNIVERSITY

THE ROYAL INSTITUTION—JAMES M’GILL—CHARTER OBTAINED—THE “MONTREAL MEDICAL INSTITUTE” SAVES M’GILL—NEW LIFE IN 1829—THE RECTOR OF MONTREAL—THE MERCHANTS’ COMMITTEE—M’GILL IN 1852—THE HISTORY OF THE FACULTIES—BUILDINGS—DEVELOPMENT SINCE 1895—RECENT BENEFACTORS—MACDONALD COLLEGE—THE STRATHCONA ROYAL VICTORIA COLLEGE FOR WOMEN. NOTE: THE UNION THEOLOGICAL MOVEMENT—THE JOINT BOARDS OF THE CONGREGATIONAL, ANGLICAN, PRESBYTERIAN AND WESLEYAN AFFILIATED COLLEGES.

II. LAVAL UNIVERSITY (MONTREAL DISTRICT)

CHAPTER XXIX

GENERAL CULTURE

I. THE LIBRARY MOVEMENT

FRENCH:—L’OEUVRE DES BONS LIVRES, 1844—THE CABINET DE LECTURE PAROISSIAL, 1857.

ENGLISH:—“MONTREAL LIBRARY” AND MONTREAL NEWS ROOM, 1821—MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, 1844—THE FRASER INSTITUTE, INCORPORATED 1870—ITS EARLY LITIGATIONS—ITS PUBLIC OPENING IN 1885—OTHER LIBRARIES.

II. LITERARY AND LEARNED SOCIETIES

THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1827—THE MECHANICS INSTITUTE, 1828—LA SOCIETE HISTORIQUE, 1856—CONFERENCE DES INSTITUTEURS, 1857—THE “INSTITUT CANADIEN”—CERCLE LITTERAIRE DE VILLE MARIE, 1857—UNION CATHOLIQUE, 1858—(THE GUIBORD CASE)—THE ANTIQUARIAN AND NUMISMATIC ASSOCIATION, 1862—THE “ECOLE LITTERAIRE” 1892—ST. JAMES LITERARY SOCIETY, 1898—THE “DICKENS’ FELLOWSHIP” 1909—OTHER LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS—THE “BURNS SOCIETY”—THE ALLIANCE FRANCAISE—THE CANADIAN CLUB, 1905.

III. ARTISTIC ASSOCIATIONS

FOREWORD:—INTELLECTUAL AND ARTISTIC EXCLUSIVENESS.

ART:—EARLY ART IN CANADA—THE MODERN MOVEMENT—THE MONTREAL SOCIETY OF ARTISTS—THE ART ASSOCIATION OF MONTREAL—ITS HISTORY—ITS PAINTINGS—MONTREAL ART COLLECTIONS—THE ART SCHOOL—MONTREAL ARTISTS—THE WOMAN’S ART SOCIETY—THE CHATEAU DE RAMEZAY—THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS—THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA—OUTSTANDING ARTISTS.

THE DRAMA:—PLAYS IN 1804—THE FIRST THEATRE ROYAL BUILT IN 1825—THE SECOND OPENED IN 1850—OTHER THEATRES TO THE PRESENT—AMATEUR THEATRICAL ASSOCIATIONS—THE DRAMATIC LEAGUE.

MUSIC:—MODERN SOCIETIES—SOCIETE DE STE CECILE—SOCIETE DE MONTAGNARDS—AMATEUR MUSICAL LEAGUE—MENDELSSOHN CHOIR—MONTREAL PHILHARMONIC—INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC.

CHAPTER XXX

NATIONAL ORIGINS OF THE POPULATION

1834, THE YEAR OF THE SIMULTANEOUS ORIGIN OF THE EARLIEST NATIONAL SOCIETIES.

ST. JEAN BAPTISTE ASSOCIATION—REORGANIZATION IN 1843—THE “MONUMENT NATIONAL”—EDUCATION AND SOCIAL AMELIORATIONS—THE FRENCH-CANADIAN SPIRIT—PRESIDENTS.

ST. GEORGE’S SOCIETY—A CELEBRATION IN 1821—OBJECT—EARLIEST OFFICERS—THE HISTORY OF ST. GEORGE’S HOME—PRESIDENTS.

ST. ANDREW’S SOCIETY—ORGANIZATION AND FIRST OFFICERS—JOINT PROCESSIONS OF NATIONAL SOCIETIES—EARLIEST CHARITABLE ACTIVITIES—THE HEALTH OF THE POPE—THE LORD ELGIN INCIDENT—THE CRIMEAN WAR—SUBSCRIPTION TO A PATRIOTIC FUND—THE HISTORY OF ST. ANDREW’S HOME BEGINS—THE HISTORY OF ST. ANDREW’S HALL—CONDOLENCE ON DEATH OF D’ARCY MCGEE—PRESIDENTS.

ST. PATRICK’S SOCIETY—ORIGINALLY NON-DENOMINATIONAL—EARLY PRESIDENTS—THE REORGANIZATION IN 1856—FIRST OFFICERS—FIRST SOIREE—FIRST ANNIVERSARY DINNER—NATIONAL SOCIETIES PRESENT—THE TOASTS—IRISH COMPANIES IN CORPUS CHRISTI PROCESSION—IRISH PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION—T. D’ARCY M’GEE—EMIGRATION WORK—ST. PATRICK’S HALL—PRESIDENTS.

IRISH PROTESTANT BENEVOLENT SOCIETY—EARLY MEMBERS—WORKS—PRESIDENTS.

GERMAN SOCIETY—HISTORY AND PRESIDENTS.

WELSH SOCIETY—ORIGINALLY THE “WELSH UNION OF MONTREAL”—AFTERWARD—ITS OBJECT—PRESIDENTS.

NEWFOUNDLAND SOCIETY—ORIGIN—PRESIDENTS.

THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT—THE JEWISH COMMUNITY.

CHAPTER XXXI

PUBLIC SAFETY SERVICES

FIGHTING FIRE—DARKNESS—FLOODS—DROUGHT

1. FIRE FIGHTING—THE FIRE OF 1765—“THE CASE OF THE CANADIANS OF MONTREAL”—THE EXTENT OF THE FIRE—FIRE PRECAUTIONS SUGGESTED—OTHER HISTORICAL FORCES—THE MONTREAL FIRE FORCES OF THE PAST AND PRESENT.

2. THE LIGHTING OF MONTREAL—OIL LAMPS, 1815—GAS, 1836—ELECTRICITY—FIRST EXPERIMENTS IN THE STREETS, 1879—THE ELECTRIC LIGHTING COMPANIES—NOTES ON INTRODUCTION OF THE TELEGRAPH—FIRE ALARM—ELECTRIC RAILWAY.

3. FLOODS, EARLY AND MODERN, 1848, 1857, 1861, 1865, 1886—THE PRACTICAL CESSATION IN 1888.

CHAPTER XXXII

LAW AND ORDER

JAILS—POLICE SERVICES—COURTHOUSE—LAW OFFICERS

CHAPTER XXXIII

HOSPITALS

THE HOTEL DIEU: JEANNE MANCE—THE HOSPITALIERES OF LA FLECHE—THE HOTEL DIEU CHAPEL—ST. PATRICK’S HOSPITAL—THE MIGRATION TO PINE AVENUE—THE PRESENT MODERN HOSPITAL.

THE GENERAL HOSPITAL: “THE LADIES BENEVOLENT SOCIETY”—THE HOUSE OF RECOVERY—THE MONTREAL GENERAL HOSPITAL—ITS BENEFACTORS AND ITS ADDITIONS—THE EARLY TRAINING OF NURSES—THE ANNEX OF 1913.

THE NOTRE DAME HOSPITAL: THE LAVAL MEDICAL FACULTY—THE OLD DONEGANI HOTEL—THE LADY PATRONESSES—MODERN DEVELOPMENT.

THE WESTERN HOSPITAL: THE BISHOPS COLLEGE MEDICAL FACULTY—THE WOMEN’S HOSPITAL.

THE ROYAL VICTORIA HOSPITAL: IN MEMORY OF QUEEN VICTORIA—ITS DESCRIPTION—ITS INCORPORATION—ITS EQUIPMENT.

THE HOMEOPATHIC HOSPITAL: FIRST ORGANIZED WORK—INCORPORATION—THE FIRST HOSPITAL—THE FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS—THE PHILLIPS TRAINING SCHOOL FOR NURSES.

THE HOSPITALS FOR THE INSANE: EARLY TREATMENT OF INSANE—THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE HOSPITALS ST. JEAN DE DIEU AT LONGUE POINTE AND THE PROTESTANT ASYLUM AT VERDUN.

CIVIC HOSPITALS: THE SMALLPOX HOSPITAL—“CONTAGIOUS” HOSPITALS—HOSPITAL ST. PAUL—ALEXANDRA HOSPITAL.

TUBERCULOSIS DISPENSARIES: THE ROYAL EDWARD INSTITUTE—PIONEER TUBERCULOSIS CLINIC IN CANADA—PUBLIC HEALTH EXHIBITIONS—THE INSTITUTE BRUCHESI: ITS DEVELOPMENT—THE GRACE DART HOME—CIVIC AID.

CHILDREN’S HOSPITALS: THE CHILDREN’S MEMORIAL HOSPITAL—STE. JUSTINE.

OTHER HOSPITAL ADJUNCT ASSOCIATIONS.

CHAPTER XXXIV

SOCIOLOGICAL MOVEMENTS

CHAPTER XXXV

COMMERCIAL HISTORY BEFORE THE UNION

CHAPTER XXXVI

COMMERCIAL HISTORY SINCE THE UNION

THE RISE OF MODERN MANUFACTURES AND INDUSTRIES

CHAPTER XXXVII

FINANCE

MONTREAL BANKING AND INSURANCE BODIES

I. BANKING: HAMILTON’S PLAN FOLLOWED BY THE FIRST BANK OF THE UNITED STATES IN 1791-1792, THE ATTEMPTED CANADA BANKING COMPANY AT MONTREAL—DELAY THROUGH AMERICAN WAR OF 1812-1815, RENEWED AGITATION FOR A BANK CHARTER FOR MONTREAL—1817, THE FIRST BANK OF MONTREAL WITHOUT A CHARTER—ITS FIRST OFFICERS—OTHER BANKS FOLLOW—THE QUEBEC BANK—THE RIVAL “BANK OF CANADA”—THE BANK OF BRITISH NORTH AMERICA—MOLSONS BANK—THE MERCHANTS BANK—BANQUE JACQUES CARTIER, PREDECESSOR TO BANQUE PROVINCIALE—THE ROYAL BANK—THE BANQUE D’HOCHELAGA—THE MONTREAL CITY AND DISTRICT BANK—BANKS WITH HEAD OFFICES ELSEWHERE—MONTREAL BANK CLEARINGS WITH CANADIAN AND NORTH AMERICAN CITIES.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

TRANSPORTATION

I

SHIPPING—EARLY AND MODERN

BY RIVER AND STREAM

MONTREAL HEAD OF NAVIGATION—LAKE ST. PETER—JACQUES CARTIER’S DIFFICULTIES—THE GRADUAL DEEPENING OF THE CHANNEL—THE LACHINE CANAL IN 1700—ITS FURTHER HISTORY—MONTREAL THE HEAD OF THE CANAL SYSTEM OF CANADA.

II

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MONTREAL SHIPPING

A—SAILING VESSELS

BIRCH BARK CANOE—BATEAU—DURHAM BOAT—SHIPBUILDING IN MONTREAL.

B—STEAM VESSELS

JOHN MOLSON’S ACCOMMODATION, 1809—PASSENGER FARES BETWEEN MONTREAL AND QUEBEC—PASSAGE DESCRIBED—THE TORRANCES—INLAND NAVIGATION—THE RICHELIEU AND ONTARIO COMPANY—THE FIRST UPPER DECK STEAMER TO SHOOT THE LACHINE RAPIDS.

C—ATLANTIC LINERS

CHAPTER XXXIX

TRANSPORTATION

I

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PORT OF MONTREAL—HERIOT’S DESCRIPTION IN 1815—T.S. BROWN IN 1818—THE ISLAND WHARF—THE CREEK—THE PRIMITIVE WHARVES—THE “POINTS”—THE RIVER FRONT—THE SPRING FLEET—FIREWOOD RAFTS—TOW BOATS—THE EVERETTA—AN ACCOUNT OF 1819—BOUCHETTE’S PLAN OF 1824—THE FIRST HARBOUR COMMISSIONERS, “THE TRINITY BOARD”—FIRST REPORT—LATEST REPORT—EARLY ENGINEERS—REVIEW OF HARBOUR IN 1872—A TRANSFORMATION FROM 1818—GRAIN ELEVATORS—NUMBER OF VESSELS—MARKET AND WOOD BOATS—THE BONSECOURS MARKET—1875 PLAN FOR IMPROVEMENT NOW CARRIED OUT—FLOATING DOCK—DESCRIPTION OF PRESENT HARBOUR—ITS FACILITIES FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT—THE DESIRE TO LENGTHEN THE SHIPPING SEASON.

II

HARBOUR COMMISSIONERS—THE HARBOUR COMMISSIONERS FROM 1830 TO THE PRESENT TIME.

III

CHAPTER XL

TRANSPORTATION BY RAIL

IV

MONTREAL AND THE RAILWAYS OF CANADA

MONTREAL THE CENTRE OF RAILWAY COMMUNICATION—THE FIRST RAILWAY—THE SNAKE RAIL AND THE “KITTEN”—“THE CHAMPLAIN AND THE ST. LAWRENCE”—THE SECOND RAILWAY. THE ATLANTIC AND ST. LAWRENCE—THE AMALGAMATION INTO THE GRAND TRUNK RAILWAY COMPANY.

1. ITS HISTORY—ITS PRESIDENTS—AN INTERESTING REPORT AT CONFEDERATION—NEW FREIGHT YARDS—CHAS. M. HAYS AND THE GRAND TRUNK PACIFIC RAILWAY—THE BUILDING OF THE VICTORIA BRIDGES BY THE GRAND TRUNK RAILROAD.

2. THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY—ITS FINANCIERS—TWIN TO CONFEDERATION—OPPOSITION TO PROMOTERS—EARLY FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES—NO BIG FORTUNES MADE—ROLLING STOCK—A REAL EMPIRE BUILDER—HELPING NEW INDUSTRIES—HUGE LAND HOLDINGS—IRRIGATION OF BARREN LANDS.

CHAPTER XLI

TRANSPORTATION BY ROAD

I

THE ANCIENT AND MODERN POSTAL SERVICE OF MONTREAL

ANCIENT ROADS—THE “GRAND VOYER”—GOOD ROADS MOVEMENT—THE EVOLUTION OF ROADS—“POST” MASTERS RECOGNIZED IN 1780—THE EARLY POSTAL SYSTEM OF MONTREAL AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN—BURLINGTON THE TERMINUS—EARLY LETTER RATES—MAIL ADVERTISEMENTS—THE QUEBEC TO MONTREAL POSTAL SERVICE—EARLY POSTOFFICE IN MONTREAL—OCEAN AND RAILWAY MAIL SERVICE—THE PRESENT POSTOFFICE—ITS HISTORICAL TABLETS BY FLAXMAN—THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE POSTAL SYSTEM—THE POSTMASTERS OF MONTREAL.

II

STREET TRANSPORTATION

MODERNIZING MONTREAL

CHAPTER XLII

1760-1841

CITY IMPROVEMENT FROM THE CESSION

UNDER JUSTICES OF THE PEACE

CHAPTER XLIII

1841-1867

CITY IMPROVEMENT AFTER THE UNION

UNDER THE MUNICIPALITY

CHAPTER XLIV

1867-1914

CITY IMPROVEMENT SINCE CONFEDERATION

THE RISE OF METROPOLITAN MONTREAL

THE METROPOLITAN ASPECT OF MONTREAL IN 1868—EDUCATIONAL BUILDINGS—THE CITY STREET RAILWAY AIDS SUBURBAN EXTENSION—FORECAST OF ANNEXATIONS—THE CITY HOMOLOGATED PLAN—THE ANNEXATION OF SUBURBAN MUNICIPALITIES IN 1883—TABLE OF ANNEXATION SINCE 1883—PREFONTAINE’S REVIEW OF THE YEARS 1884-1898—IMPROVEMENTS UNDER THE BOARD OF CONTROL—A REVIEW OF THE LAST TWO DECADES OF METROPOLITAN GROWTH—THE CHANGES DOWNTOWN—THE GROWTH UPTOWN.

UNDER ENGLISH RULE
PART I

CONSTITUTIONAL AND CIVIC PROGRESS

HISTORY OF MONTREAL

CHAPTER I

THE EXODUS FROM MONTREAL

1760

“THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH, GIVING PLACE TO NEW”

AMHERST’S LETTER REVIEWING EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE CAPITULATION—THE SURRENDER OF ARMS—THE REVIEW OF BRITISH TROOPS—THE DEPARTURE OF THE FRENCH TROOPS—END OF THE PECULATORS—VAUDREUIL’S CAPITULATION CENSURED—DEPARTURE OF THE PROVINCIAL TROOPS—ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF THE COLONY—DEPARTURE OF AMHERST—THE TWO RACES LEFT BEHIND. NOTES: (1) THE EXODUS AND THE REMNANT.—(2) THE POPULATION OF CANADA AT THE FALL.

On the capitulation of Montreal in the grey of the early morn of September 8, 1760, British Rule began and the Régime of France was ended. On the 9th the victorious Amherst wrote his official account to the Honourable Lieutenant Governor Hamilton. The details therein will serve to recapitulate the history of the final downpour on Montreal during the days preceding its fall, with the new era commencing, and accordingly we present it to our readers.

“Camp of Montreal,

9th September, 1760.

Sir:

In Mine of the 26th ultimo I acquainted You with the progress of the Army after the departure from Oswego and with the Success of His Majesty’s Arms against Fort Levis, now Fort William Augustus, where I remained no longer than was requisite to make Such preparations as I Judged Essentially necessary for the passage of the army down the River, which took me up to the 30th.

In the morning of the following day I set out and proceeded from Station to Station to our present Ground, where we arrived on the 6th in the evening, after having in the passage sustained a loss of Eighty-Eight men drowned,——Batteaus of Regts. seventeen of Artillery, with Some Artillery Stores, Seventeen Whaleboats, one Row Galley staved, Occasioned by the Violence of the Current and the Rapids being full of broken Waves.

The Inhabitants of the Settlements I passed thro’ in my way hither having abandoned their Houses and run into the Woods I sent after them; Some were taken and others came of their own Accord. I had them disarmed and Caused the oath of Allegiance to be tendered to them, which they readily took; and I accordingly put them in quiet possession of their Habitations, with Which treatment they seemed no less Surprised than happy. The troops being formed and the Light Artillery brought up, the Army lay on their Arms till the Night of the 6th.

On the 7th, in the morning, two Officers came to an advanced post with a Letter from the Marquis de Vaudreuil referring me to what one of them, Colonel Bouguinville, had to say. The Conversation ended with a Cessation of Arms till 12 o’Clock, when the Proposals were brought in; Soon after I returned them with the terms I was willing to grant, Which both the Marquis de Vaudreuil and Mons. de Lévis, the French General, were very strenuous to have softened; this Occasioned Sundry Letters to Pass between us During the day as well as the Night (when the Army again lay on their Arms), but as I would not on any Account deviate in the Least from my Original Conditions and I insisted on an Immediate and Categorical answer Mr. de Vaudreuil, soon after daybreak, Notified to me that he had determined to Accept of them and two Sets of them were accordingly Signed by him and me and Exchanged Yesterday when Colonel Haldimand, with the Grenadiers and the Light Infantry of the Army took Possession of One of the Gates of the town and is this day to proceed in fulfilling the Articles of the Capitulation; By which the French Troops are all to lay down their arms; are not to serve during the Continuance of the Present War and are to be sent back to Old France as are also the Governors and Principal Officers of the Legislature of the Whole Country, Which I have now the Satisfaction to inform You is entirely Yielded to the Dominion of His Majesty. On which Interesting and happy Event I most Sincerely Congratulate you.

Governor Murray, with the Troops from Quebec, landed below the Town on Sunday last & Colonel Haviland with his Corps (that took possession of the Isle aux Noix, Abandoned by the enemy on the 28th) Arrived Yesterday at the South Shore Opposite to My Camp. I am, with great regard,

Sir,

Your most Obedient,

Humble Servant

Jeff Amherst.

The Honourable Lt. Governor Hamilton.

(Endorsed by Hamilton, Camp Montreal, 7 ber, 1776. General Amherst, received by Post Tuesday, 23d September.)”[1]

Haldimand, as directed by Amherst on the 9th, received the submission of the troops of France.

In the French camp, de Lévis reviewed his forces—2,132 of all ranks. In his Journal they are thus summarized:

FORTIFICATIONS OF MONTREAL, 1760

There on the Place d’Armes yielded up their arms, all that was left of the brave French warriors who had no dishonour in their submission, surrendering only to the overwhelming superior numbers of the English conquerors. With de Lévis was the able de Bourlamaque and the scholarly soldier de Bougainville, with Dumas, Rocquemaure, Pouchot, Luc de la Corne and so many of the heroes of Ticonderoga and Carillon. There too was de Vaudreuil, the Governor General, Commander-in-Chief, and last governor of New France, with his brother, the last Governor of Montreal under the Old Régime. Haviland’s entourage and the British troops present could not but admire their late opponents.

The only jarring note of the ceremony was the absence of the French flags from the usual paraphernalia to be delivered up. The omission is thus signaled by Amherst, in his official report of the submission, who after mentioning the surrender of the two captured British American stands of colours goes on to say that there were no French colours forthcoming: “The Marquis de Vaudreuil, generals and commanding officers of the regiment, giving their word of honour that the battalions had not any colours; they had brought them with them six years ago; they were torn to pieces and finding them troublesome in this country they had destroyed them.”

They had however been but recently destroyed, for the “Journal” of de Lévis, written by him Cæsar-like in the third person, tells how, after being unable to shake the determination of de Vaudreuil to capitulate without the honours of war, de Lévis, in order to spare his troops a portion of the humiliation they were to undergo, had ordered them to burn their colours to avoid the hard condition of handing them over to the enemy. “M. le Chevalier de Lévis voyant avec douleur que rien ne pouvoit faire changer la determination de M. le Marquis de Vaudreuil voulant épargner aux troupes une partie de l’humiliation quelles alloient subir, leur ordonna de brûler leurs drapeaux pour se soustraire à la dure condition de les remettre aux ennemis.”[2] (Cf. Journal des Campagnes du Chevalier de Lévis en Canada, 1756-1760. Edited by l’Abbé H.R. Casgrain, Montreal, C.O. Beauchemin et fils, 1889.)

On the 11th Amherst turned out his whole force and received Vaudreuil on parade. Between these two, friendly relations had been established. Place d’Armes was again a scene of colour with the presence of the British regiments led by Murray, Haviland, Burton, Gage, Fraser the gallant Highlander, Guy Carleton, who was to become the famous viceroy of Canada and to die Lord Dorchester, Lord Howe, and the scholarly Swiss soldier Haldimand. There were present, too, Sir William Johnston, the baronet of the Mohawk Valley and leader of the six nations, Major Robert Rogers of the famous rangers,[3] with his two brothers, and others of note. No doubt de Vaudreuil’s suite was not far off with de Lévis, de Bourlamaque, de Bougainville, Dumas, Roquemaure, Pouchot, Luc de la Corne, with the nefarious Intendant Bigot and all the principal officers of the colony who had been in Montreal, the headquarters of government since the fall of Quebec.

During the three following days the town was definitely occupied by the British, and the arrangements completed for the departure of the French Regulars. The regiments of Languedoc and Berry, with the marine corps, were embarked on the 13th; the regiments of Royal Rousillon and Guyenne on the 14th; on the 16th the regiments of La Reine and Béarn. On the 17th de Lévis, with de Bourlamaque, started for Quebec; de Vaudreuil and Bigot left on the 20th and 21st. By the 22nd every French soldier had left Montreal, except those who had married in the country and who had resolved to remain in it and transfer their allegiance to the new government.[4]

Fate had dealt a severe blow to the brave defenders of Canada whom we now find sailing from Montreal to France, which would appear to have abandoned them. The regulars and the colonial troops, in spite of their jealousies and emulations, were brave men, and duly honoured as such by the British soldiery who saw the vessels bearing on the broad St. Lawrence so many of those who had recently disputed the long drawn out strife for the conquest of Canada. Speaking of this, “the most picturesque and dramatic of American wars,” Parkman continues: “There is nothing more noteworthy than the skill with which the French and Canadian leaders use their advantages; the indomitable spirit with which, slighted and abandoned as they were, they grappled with prodigious difficulties and the courage with which they were seconded by regulars and militia alike. In spite of occasional lapses, the defence of Canada deserves a tribute of admiration.”—(“Montcalm and Wolfe,” Vol. II, p. 382.)

The departures from Montreal and Quebec must have been indeed heart-rending. That from Montreal, since the fall of Quebec, the home of all the high officials of the civil, religious and military governments, was the most striking, as the natural leaders of the colony were mostly there. “There repassed into Europe,” says the French Canadian historian, F.X. Garneau, “about 185 officers, 2,400 soldiers valid and invalid, and fully 500 sailors, domestics, women and children. The smallness of this proved at once the cruel ravages of the war, the paucity of embarkations of succour sent from France, and the great numerical superiority of the victor. The most notable colonists at the same time left the country. Their emigration was encouraged, that of the Canadian officers especially, whom the conquerors desired to be rid of and whom they eagerly stimulated to pass to France. Canada lost by this self-expatriation the most precious portion of its people, invaluable as its members were from their experience, their intelligence and their knowledge of public and commercial affairs.”[5] (Bell’s translation, Vol. II, p. 294.)

SIR GUY CARLETON

GENERAL JAMES MURRAY

LORD JEFFREY AMHERST

The clergy, however, solidly remained at their posts to build up the self-esteem of the people and to rear up a loyal race. Hence the respect and gratitude due to them by the French Canadians of today.

Yet there were many of whom the country was well rid, such as Bigot, Cadet, Péan, Bréard, Varin, Le Mercier, Pénisseault, Maurin, Corpron and others, accused of the frauds and peculations that helped to ruin Canada. A great sigh of relief might well have escaped from the French who had been ruined by them.

Most of the ships provided by the English government weathered the November gales. The vessel L’Auguste containing Saint-Luc de la Corne, his brother, and others, after being storm-tossed and saved from conflagration, finally drove towards the shore, struck and rolled on its side, and became wrecked on the Cap du Nord, Ile Royale. La Corne, with six others, gained the shore, and he reached Quebec before the end of the winter, as his journal tells us. His name was to become familiar at Montreal under the British régime.

The sloop Marie, which had been fitted up to receive the Marquis de Vaudreuil, his family and staff, had an early mishap between Montreal and Three Rivers, having run aground.

M. de Vaudreuil and the staff of officers of the colony arrived at Brest on the English vessel L’Aventure under a flag of truce, with 142 passengers from Canada. Thence, de Vaudreuil wrote to the minister of mariné. On December 5th the latter wrote back acknowledging this letter and that of September from Montreal containing the articles of capitulation, with papers relating thereto. A précis of this letter to Vaudreuil reveals that, although the king was aware of the condition of the colony, in default of the reinforcements it was unable to receive, yet, after the hopes the governor had given, by his letters in the month of June, of holding out some time longer, and his assurances that the last efforts would be put forth to sustain the honour of the king before yielding, His Majesty did not expect to learn so soon of the surrender of Montreal and of the whole colony. Granting the force of all the reasons which led to the capitulation, the king was nevertheless considerably surprised, and less satisfied, at having to submit to conditions so little to his honour, especially in the face of the representations which had been made to him by M. de Lévis on behalf of the military corps of the colony. The king, in reading the memorandum of these representations, which the minister was unable to avoid placing before him, saw in it that, notwithstanding the slight hope of success, Vaudreuil was still in a condition, with the diminished resources remaining to him, to attempt an attack or a defence that might have brought the English to grant a capitulation that would have been more honourable for the troops. The king left him at liberty to remain at Brest for the time, for his health. With regard to the officers who were with him, they could retire to their families or elsewhere. It was sufficient for him to be informed of their place of residence.—(“Canadian Archives,” Vol. III, p. 313.)

Not only was Vaudreuil censured for the capitulation of Montreal, but finally he had the honour of being placed in the Bastille with the peculators whom we have above mentioned.[6] His release, however, was speedy. Whatever his gains might have been from trading in the early part of his career, e. g., as Governor of Louisiana, he reached France from his government of Canada a poor man. The trial of those accused of peculation lasted from December 1, 1761, till the end of March, and on December 10, 1763, the president of the commission rendered his final decision. Vaudreuil with five more were relieved from the accusation, but he died in 1764 less from age than from sorrow.

“In the course of his trial he stood by the Canadian officers, now being slandered by Bigot. ‘Brought up in Canada myself,’ said the late Governor General, ‘I knew them, every one, and I maintain that almost all of them are as upright as they are valorous; in general the Canadians seem to be soldiers born; a masculine and military training early inures them to fatigues and dangers. The annals of their expeditions, their explorations, and their dealings with the aborigines abound in marvelous examples of courage, activity, patience under privation, coolness in peril, and obedience to leaders during services which have cost many of them their lives, but without slackening the ardour of the survivors. Such officers as these, with a handful of armed inhabitants and a few savage warriors, have often disconcerted the projects, paralyzed the preparations, ravaged the provinces, and beaten the troops of Great Britain when eight or ten times more numerous than themselves. In a country with frontiers so vast, such qualities were priceless.’ And he finished by declaring that he would fail in his duty to those generous warriors, and even to the state itself, if he did not proclaim their services, their merits and their innocence.”—(Bell’s translation of Garneau, Vol. II, p. 298.)

Governor Carleton, writing in 1767 to Lord Shelburne, confirms this tribute. “The new subjects could send into the field about eighteen thousand men well able to carry arms, of which number, above one-half have already served with as much valour, with more zeal, and more military knowledge for America, than the regular troops of France that were joined with them.”

Vaudreuil might also have paid a compliment to the brave women of New France, who, like Madeleine de Verchères and others, were ready to fight with the men, and who were true women and wives. “Brave and beautiful,” George III summed them up in a compliment paid at his court in London after the conquest to Madame de Léry, the wife of Chevalier de Léry, the engineer who repaired the fortifications of Montreal: “If all the Canadian ladies resemble you, I have truly made a fine conquest.”

It must not be thought that the departure of the French colonial officers was an entire abandonment of the project of regaining the country. They were to be retained for the French service and possibly for future use in Canada.[7] They were called to Tourraine and there held at the king’s pleasure under pay, to all intents and purposes officers in the French service, and liable to be sent on any service.

“The British provincial troops were sent from Montreal at an early date. The New Hampshire and Rhode Island regiments crossed the river and proceeded to Chambly, thence went to Crown Point. The Connecticut troops were ordered to Oswego and Fort Stanwix; the New York and New Jersey regiments to the lately named Fort William Augustus, at the head of the rapids, and to Oswegatchie (Ogdensburg). Rogers, with four hundred men, bearing letters from Vaudreuil instructing the forts to be given over, was sent to Detroit, Miami, St. Joseph and Michillimackinac.[8] Moncton at the same time received orders to forward regular troops to take permanent possession of these forts.”—(Kingsford, “History of Canada,” Vol. IV, p. 409.)

The troops that were to remain in Montreal for the winter were now established in their quarters. The French Indians in the neighbourhood were summoned to the city and requested to bring their prisoners; they appeared with several men, women and children, and Johnston established rules and regulations for their future government.

Amherst remained in Montreal till September 26th, when he went down the river to Quebec. He left on October 5th and on the 18th was on Lake Champlain, thence to Albany, which he left on the 21st to arrive in New York on the 28th of October. He never visited Canada again, but he left it, however, well organized.

Immediately after the capitulation of Montreal he had occupied himself with the establishment of a provisional military government with tribunals to administer justice summarily until a definite form of government should be determined. The French division of the province into the three administrative districts of Quebec, Three Rivers and Montreal was maintained. In a despatch to Pitt dated October 4, 1760, from Quebec (Amériques et Indes Occidentales, No. 699), Amherst renders an account of all the dispositions which he had made since the date of the capitulation of Montreal. Although the greater part of these were military matters, the following items concerning the civil administration may be found:

September 15; I have sent officers with detachments to the different villages to collect the arms and to make them take the oath of allegiance.

September 16; I have named Colonel Burton governor of Three Rivers.

September 17; I have given order to the militia of the town (Montreal) and of the suburbs to give up their arms and to take the oath of allegiance next day, immediately after the embarkation of M. de Vaudreuil.

September 22; I have named Brigadier General Gage governor of Montreal.

On the same day he published a proclamation for the government of Three Rivers similar to the one for Montreal, dated merely September, 1760 (“Amériques et Indes Occidentales”), in which arrangements are made for the transaction of business and amicable arrangements with the new government and the troops.

The new government was only, however, of an ad interim nature, for it was not certain that England would keep Canada. It was this thought that reconciled the Canadians to the new situation.

Meanwhile the British Flag floated over Citadel Hill.

The country was now British. France had been tried in the balance and found wanting. It had lost, through its wavering policy, a fair domain and a noble people. This poignant loss was voiced by de Vaudreuil, the deposed governor general, who, in spite of his faults, was a true Canadian and had visions of its future as one of the proudest jewels in the crown of France, for was it not La Nouvelle France? On quitting his beloved country he paid it this homage in a letter to his minister:

“With these beautiful and vast countries, France loses 70,000 inhabitants[9] of a rare quality; a race of people unequaled for their docility, bravery and loyalty. The vexations they have suffered for many years, more especially during the five years preceding the reduction of Quebec—all without a murmur, or importuning the king for relief—sufficiently manifest their perfect submissiveness.”

The qualities, they had then, remain still the mark of those of the same race living in Montreal of today.

“In all things we are sprung, from
Earth’s best blood, have titles manifold.”

As their predecessors took the oath of allegiance to King George II, and became good Britishers, so have their descendants remained today, in the days of George V. “What perished in the capitulation of Montreal,” says Parkman, “was the Bourbon monarchy and the narrow absolutism which fettered the life of New France throughout the Old Régime. What survives today is the vigour of two races striving to make Canada strong and free and reverent of law.”

NOTE I

THE EXODUS AND THE REMNANT

Judge Baby of Montreal, in an article in the Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal, 3d Edit., Vol. II, p. 304, has combatted very successfully the traditional view started by Bibaud and followed by Garneau that after the capitulation of Montreal, and the Treaty of Paris, 1763, the seigneurs, the men of learning, and the chief traders and others of the directing classes, left the country. This emigration was from the town but the country places were untouched. He proves that a great many remained outside the civil and military party who had governed the country, and the soldiery who were taken officially to France; that many of the young colonial officers who had thought to have a chance to follow a career in the army or navy of France shortly returned at the call of their fathers whose interest in their lands and whose poverty, heightened by the depreciation of the paper money, would not have induced them to begin life again in France; that even of those who did go to France there were very many who returned, as they had intended; hence the recurrence of names, in the history after the cession, made familiar before it. The long list given by Judge Baby of Seigneurs and gentlemen proved by him to have remained, strengthens his case. An interesting list of French-Canadians remaining in Montreal engaged in business at this time is also given by him as follows:

Guy, Blondeau, Le Pellé De LaHaye, Lequindre Douville, Perthuis, Nivard St. Dizier, Les freres Hervieux, Gaucher-Gamelin, Glasson, Moquin, St. Sauveur, Pothier, Lemoine de Monnière, De Martigny, De Couagne, Desauniers, Mailhot, St. Ange-Charly, Dumas, Magnan, Mitiver, L’Amy, Bruyère, Pierre Chaboillez, Fortier, Lefèbre du Chouquet, Courtheau, Vallée, Cazeau, Charly, Carignan, Auger, Porlier frère, Pommereau, Larocque, Dumeriou, Roy-Portelance, De Vienne, De Montforton, Sanguinet, Campeau, Laframboise, Vauquier, Guillemain, Curot, Dufau, Campion, Lafontaine, Truillier-Lacombe, Périneault, Arillac, Léveillé, Bourassa, Pillet, Hurtubise, Leduc, Monbrun, Landrieu, Mezière, Hilbert, Tabeau, Sombrun, Marchesseau, Avrard, Lasselle, Dumas St. Martin, Beaubien-Desrivières, Réaume, Nolin, Cotté, St. Germain, Ducalvet, L’Eschelle, Beaumont.

The Judge gives the names of many jurisconsults who remained in the country, three of whom eventually became members of the Superior Council; also of doctors; the great majority of the notaries remained in the country. In summing up, he finds “130 seigneurs, 100 gentry, 125 traders of mark, twenty-five jurisconsults, and men of law, twenty-five to thirty doctors and surgeons, notaries of almost the same number”—“were these not,” he asks, “sufficient to face the political, intellectual and other needs of the population then in Quebec, Montreal and Three Rivers?”

NOTE II

POPULATION OF CANADA AT THE FALL

M. de Vaudreuil’s estimate of 70,000 population has been challenged by Dr. Kingsford (“History of Canada,” Vol. IV, p. 413).

Amherst before leaving Canada obtained a census of the population which he reported as 76,172 by parishes and districts.

The census must have been obtained through the French and there is no ground for supposing that they would designedly furnish an incorrect statement. It does not, however, accord with the previous or subsequent tables of population.

The population in 1736 was 39,063; 1737, 39,970; 1739, 42,701; 1754, 55,009. In the fifteen years between the last two dates the population increased 12,003, something less than one-third. If we apply this increase to the next six years we may be justified in estimating the increase at one-eighth, which would place the population at 62,000. It is not provable that in these six years of war the population could have increased upwards of 20,000,—five-elevenths—nearly half of the former total. In 1761 the three governors were called upon to furnish a census of their several districts. The reports were:

“I am inclined, therefore,” says Kingsford, “to estimate the French population of Canada in 1760 at 60,000 souls, the number of which hitherto has been generally accepted as correctly representing it.”

At the same time Doctor Kingsford placed too much reliance on the census of 1761. It is well known that fear of conscription and other bogies caused the census returns of French-Canadian inhabitants to be minimized for many a long day under British rule. If Amherst’s census of 76,172 is correct, as well as the 61,780, that of the year 1761, then a loss of 14,392 is to be accounted for.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] From R. McCord’s collection.

[2] A detailed and romantic account of their burning on St. Helen’s Island is to be found in “L’Ile de Ste. Helène, Passè, Présent et Avenir, par A. Achintre et J.A. Crevier, M.D., Montreal, 1876.” I have found no historical proof of them being burnt there.—Ed.

[3] Major Rogers’ picture in ranger uniform long decorated the shops of London. His bold, bucanneering deeds caught the popular fancy. The late Lord Amherst recalled long afterward how certain verses traditional in his family had been taught the children of successive Amhersts so long that the meaning of the allusion was forgotten until quite recently, when it was found that they referred to Rogers.

[4] The French troops were only able to leave Quebec on the 22nd and 25th of October.—“Can. Arch. A. and W.I.,” 95, p. 1.

[5] See Appendix for Judge Baby’s criticism and qualification of the extent of this exodus.

[6] The accused numbered fifty-five. Among those condemned either to banishment from France or restitution and fines were: Bigot, the Intendant, Varin, his sub-delegate, and Duchesnaux, his secretary; Cadet, commissary general of Canada, and his agent, Corpron; Péan, captain and aide-major of the marine troops in Canada; Estèbe, the keeper of the King’s stores in Quebec; (all these had operated in Montreal directly or through their agents); Martel de St. Antoine, keeper of the King’s store at Montreal; Maurin, Pénisseault, merchants and operators in Cadet’s offices in this city; and Le Moyne-Despins, a merchant employed in furnishing provisions to the army. See “Montreal Under the French Régime,” Vol. I.

[7] In 1767 Guy Carleton feared an uprising in Canada on the probable return of this body of officers. See letter to Lord Shelburne. (Constitutional Documents—Shortt & Doughty.)

[8] Rogers reached New York, on his return from Detroit, the following February. Owing to the setting in of winter he had been unable to proceed to other forts. He reported that he had found one thousand Canadians in the neighbourhood of Detroit.—“Can. Arch. A. and W.I., 961,” p. 219.

[9] See note at the end of this chapter.

CHAPTER II

THE INTERREGNUM

1760-1763

MILITARY GOVERNMENT

BRIGADIER GAGE, GOVERNOR OF MONTREAL—THE ADDRESS OF THE MILITIA AND MERCHANTS—GOVERNMENT BY THE MILITARY BUT NOT “MARTIAL LAW”—THE CUSTOM OF PARIS STILL PREVAILS—COURTS ESTABLISHED—THE EMPLOYMENT OF FRENCH-CANADIAN MILITIA CAPTAINS IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE—SENTENCES FROM THE REGISTERS OF THE MONTREAL COURTS—GOVERNOR GAGE’S ORDINANCES—TRADE—THE PORT—GAGE’S REPORT TO PITT ON THE STATE OF THE GOVERNMENT OF MONTREAL—THE PROMULGATION OF THE DECLARATION OF THE DEFINITIVE TREATY OF PARIS—REGULATIONS CONCERNING THE LIQUIDATION OF THE PAPER MONEY—LEAVE TO THE FRENCH TO DEPART—LAST ORDINANCES OF GAGE—HIS DEPARTURE.

Brigadier Gage was appointed governor of Montreal on September 21, 1760.[1] He early won the esteem of the townspeople. All his ordinances manifest the desire to act in accordance with justice and in harmony with the people. Montrealers recognized this and shortly after the death of George II, which took place on October 25th, expressed their confidence in their rulers in an address written in English and French. The English version as inserted in the New York Gazette is as follows:

“To his Excellency, General Gage, governor of Montreal and its dependencies.

“The address of the officers of militia and merchants of the city of Montreal.

“Cruel Destiny has thus cutt short the Glorious Days of so Great and so Magnanimous a Monarch! We are come to pour out our Grief unto the paternal Bosom of Your Excellency, the Sole Tribute of Gratitude of a People who will never cease to Exalt the mildness and Moderation of their New Masters. The General who has conquered us has rather treated Us as a Father than a Vanquisher and has left us a precious Pledge[2] by name and deed of his Goodness to Us. What acknowledgements are we not beholden to make for so many Favours? Ha! They shall be forever Engraven in our Hearts in Indelible Characters. We Entreat Your Excellency to continue us the Honour of Your Protection. We will endeavour to Deserve it by Our Zeal and by the Earnest Prayers We shall ever offer up to the Immortal Being for Your Health and Preservation.” (Canadian Archives, A. & W., I, 96, I, page 327.)

The mildness and moderation of the “New Masters” was particularly shown by the retention of existing laws and customs. It will be recalled that Vaudreuil, in the Articles of Capitulation had asked that “French and Canadians should be continued to be governed according to the customs of Paris and the laws and usages established for this country and should not be subject to any other laws than those established under the French dominion.” Whereupon Amherst had replied that this had been answered by the preceding article and especially by the reply to the last (Article 41), asking that the British government should only require a strict neutrality of the Canadians, which said curtly: “They become subjects of the king”—a non-committal reply, which at first looked severe but was, as the conscientious historian, Jacques Viger,[3] has said, just and reasonable under the circumstances. In the event, Amherst granted more than his answer would suggest, for during the Interregnum, the French and British incomers continued to be governed according to the custom of Paris. Hence the gratitude expressed through General Gage was well deserved.

The period of the Interregnum, now beginning (September 8, 1760, to August 10, 1764), which was to last until the promulgation of the treaty of Paris, and the official publication by Governor General Murray of his civil appointment, has been called erroneously by several French historians, “La Regne Militaire,” a term suggestive of military despotism and summary justice. Commander Jacques Viger, M. Labrie, Judge Mondelet and others rejected this erroneous misnomer in the columns of the Journal “La Bibliotheque Canadienne,” being edited in 1827 by Bibaud, the well known historian. For, after examining the documents of the period they came to the conclusion that the name of La Regne Militaire could only be merited because, as most of the official men of the law having been in Government employ had left the country and new justices had to be created who should judge according to “les lois, formes et usages” of the country, the government devolved perforce on the military men and of the “milices,” the only educated men left besides the clergy.

This is made clear by a memoir of October 15, 1777, to the British government on the subject of the administration of justice, drawn up by Judges Panet, Mabane and Dunn, of whom Pierre Panet had been one of the greffiers at Montreal, and the others had had close relations with the military judges. Their testimony is therefore convincing. They state: “Though Canada was conquered by His Majesty’s arms in the fall of 1760, the administration in England did not interfere with the interior government of it till the year 1763. It remained, during that period, as formerly, with three districts, under the separate command of military officers who established in their respective districts, military courts under different forms, indeed, but in which, according to the policy observed in wise nations towards a conquered people the laws and usages of Canada were observed in the rules of decision.”

The basis of the new military government was the placard issued by General Amherst from Montreal on the 22d of September, 1760, in which he announced the new order of the government for the old and new subjects, and outlined the new form of military government throughout the three districts, by the appointment in each parish of the officers of the militia, the commandant of the regular troops and a third court of further appeal to the governor, as the future demonstrators of justice, and then left it to the local governors of the other two divisions of the country to establish their own courts. These officers of militia were the most competent at the time to carry on the traditional “custom of Paris” as they were mostly appointed from the Seigneurs of the district and the educated class.

Accordingly on October 28, 1760, General Gage issued his orders establishing tribunals of militia officers to regulate civil disputes among individuals and a second tribunal of appeal before the regular military court, with a final court of appeal to himself.

The rest of the document deals with police prohibitions to the inhabitants, not to harbour deserters or to traffic with the soldiers for their arms, clothing, etc., or any other of their accoutrements; it orders chimneys to be swept once a month, and other precautions against fire; carpenters were to be prepared with an adz, the inhabitants with an axe and bucket; also arrangements for safety against snow from falling from houses, the cleansing of the portions before the house and the disposal of garbage, the keeping of the roads and bridges in good order, and regulations concerning the sale of provisions brought in by the country people, the sale to be made in the common market place with the prohibition to town merchants to forestall the citizens by buying up the supplies brought in. The militia captains being no lawyers, were only required by Amherst to dispense law and justice as best they could, being limited to civil cases.

The ordinance of Thomas Gage, governing the administration of justice in his jurisdiction of Montreal by dividing it into five districts with definite powers and the regulations for the upkeep of the courts therein, was dated at Montreal, October 13, 1761. In each of the five districts there was to assemble on the first and fifteenth of each month a court of officers of the “Milice.” These militia courts were to be composed of not more than seven and not less than five members, of which one should hold the rank of captain, the senior to act as president. The officers of militia of each district were summoned to meet in their parishes on the 24th of October to make arrangements for the whole of these courts and to prepare rosters of officers for duty therein.

The Town of Montreal was set apart as a judicial district of its own, with a local board of officers to administer the laws. Appeal was allowed from these courts to three boards of officers of His Majesty’s Troops, one to meet at Montreal, the other at Varennes and the third at St. Sulpice, these courts of appeal to sit on the 20th of each month. A further appeal from these courts to the governor in person was provided for.

In the event of capital crimes, officers of militia were authorized to arrest the criminals and their accomplices and to conduct them under guard to Montreal, the militia officers to furnish with each prisoner an account of the crime and a list of witnesses. In civil cases involving small amounts, not exceeding twenty livres all the officers of the militia were individually granted authority to adjudicate with an appeal to and no further than the militia courts of the districts.

Provision was made for the payment of the militia officers for all of these duties by a scale of fees, a treasurer to be appointed for each court. The officers of militia were especially enjoined to maintain peace and order within their respective districts.

On October 17th the Conseil des Capitaines de Milice de Montreal presented a memorial to the governor expressing their willingness to administer justice gratuitously, as they had done in the past, but requesting as a favour from His Excellency that they be exempted from the obligation to billet troops in their domiciles. They requested that six cords of wood be purchased to heat the chamber in which their sittings were held and that Mr. Panet, their clerk, be compensated for his services at the rate of thirty sols for each sentence. Two militia sergeants had been appointed to act as bailiffs and criers of the court, and a tariff of fees was asked for to provide for their pay. These sergeants, it was also explained, were not only made use of in the administration of justice but also for the district, for the supervision of the statutory labour or corvèe. This memorial, which was signed “R. Decouange,” was approved by the governor.[4]

The inclusion of the French officers in the administration of the affairs of the country was a wise and honest attempt on the part of the British to carry out the promise of the capitulation to retain for the present the laws and customs of the past. In choosing the officers of the militia they were well advised, since the commissions there were held by the Seigneurs and the other notabilities of their respective districts, men who were the best educated and the most esteemed in the country. The choice was politic also, for it secured the continuance of the services of men who, under the old régime, had already been in charge of the conduct of justice, as well as public and communal affairs. Indeed it was to them that there had been intrusted the carrying out of the public works, such as road making and repairs, bridge building, the regulation of statutory labor through corvèes, etc. In the new régime, therefore, the militia officers were practically reinstated in their former functions.

An examination has been made by Judge Mondelet of Three Rivers, of the registers kept of the decisions of the military court of Montreal. These latter have been generally found equitable and founded on positive law; they are legally attested to in most cases, the secretary of the council being a Frenchman skilled in the law, such as was Pierre Panet, the notary, and the minutes are all in French. The first four registers contain the transactions of the “Chambre de Milices” presided over by the captains of the militia, and dealt only with civil cases. The fifth and sixth of these registers contain the criminal decisions of the court martials of the Chambre Militaire of Montreal and that of St. Sulpice, as well as appeals from the “Chambre de Milices.” This court was composed only of officers of the regular army to the number of five. In addition there was the further right of appeal to the governor. The seventh register “appeals to the governor,” records the decisions of General Gage (page 299), and of General Burton (page 95).

By consulting the records we find that order during this period was observed independently of the racial distinctions in the city. We hear of, for instance, early in 1761 of the execution of a grenadier of the Forty-fourth Regiment for robbery, which is balanced by that of a French soldier, formerly of the La Salle Regiment, for the murder of a habitant at Ile Jésus, the execution being carried out in the market place.

It will be interesting here to notice some of the court martials held at Montreal in the years 1761 and 1762. It will be seen that French and English, the “new” and the “old” subjects, came equally under them, being treated with equal justice. The following cases from the “Livre d’orde” reveal this.

Montreal, June 3, 1761, at the court martial general, Lieutenant-Colonel Grant presiding, Jean Marchand of Boucherville, was prosecuted for the murder of Joseph Carpentier, a Canadian,—acquitted.

Tuesday, June 30, William Bewen accused of having intoxicated soldiers and of selling rum without license, is found guilty, having been accessory to his associate, Isaac Lawrence, who has the habit of selling rum to the soldiers,—condemned to receive 200 stripes of the cat-o’-nine tails, and to be driven from the town at the beat of the drum. (First of July, Isaac Lawrence similarly condemned.)

August 6, Joseph Lavalleé and François Herpin, inhabitants of Montreal, prosecuted for theft,—acquitted.

Joseph Burgen, one of those who came following the army, is accused and convicted for theft, and condemned to be hanged by the neck until death shall ensue. The General approved the sentence, but pardoned him on the condition that he left this government without delay.

August 13, George Skipper and Bellair, bakers, accused and arraigned by Captain Disnay for having sold bread, which had not the requisite weight,—acquitted.

September 19, John Charlette and one named Lameure, Canadians, are indicted for having solicited Joseph Myard, a drummer, to desert. Charlette is acquitted and Lameure is found guilty and condemned to receive 300 blows from the whip. He is pardoned by the General.

December 13, William Morris, accused of having kept a dissolute house, is condemned to a fine of £5.

December 24, two Canadians prosecuted for having the property of the King in their possession. One is acquitted and the other found guilty and condemned to receive 400 stripes of the lash. The General approves the sentence, but reduces the lashes to fifty.

For 1762, we may choose an incident which shows the growth of the tendency towards the unpleasant relations between the Montreal English merchants and the military, which afterwards had such serious results, and helped to occasion the recall of General Murray.

February 26, Mr. Grant and Edward Chinn, merchants, accused of having insulted Ensign Nott of the Fourth Battalion of the Sixth Regiment of Royal Americans, are found guilty and condemned, Mr. Grant to a fine of £30 and Mr. Chinn to a fine of £20, “which sums will be employed according to the direction of the General to the relief of the unhappy poor in Montreal.” Pardon is to be asked of Ensign Nott in the presence of the garrison of Montreal in the following terms, namely—“Ensign Nott I am very sorry for having been guilty of assault in your regard and very humbly ask your pardon.” The General approved the sentence, but reduced the fine of Mr. Grant to £20. Mr. Forrest Oakes was also prosecuted for a like offence and condemned also to ask pardon of Ensign Nott, and to undergo fourteen days’ imprisonment. The General reduced the imprisonment to twenty-four hours and exempted Mr. Oakes from asking pardon, because it appeared to him that the injuries received had been reciprocal.

From these judgments, we may see that, while the Chambre de Justice of Chambre de Milices judged purely civil affairs, all criminal affairs, great and small, were relegated to the “Council of War,” otherwise called the “Court Martial,” which performed the functions nowadays of the courts of Quarter Sessions and criminal courts of King’s Bench. The “General” was the final court of appeal.

A glance at some of the ordinances of this period will further illustrate the life of the town. On November 27 Governor Gage found it necessary to issue ordinances against merchants, who without permission of the governor, went to sell their merchandise and intoxicating liquors in the country places. On the 13th of January, 1762, there occurred a further ordinance, explaining the former and forbidding in addition the sale of liquors to soldiers and savages, and fixing the quantity lawful to be sold to the inhabitants at one time. These merchants were probably newcomers from the English colonies now drifting into the city and anxious to make good quickly rather than scrupulously.

On the 12th of May regulations were issued concerning the amount of cords of wood that should be furnished to the troops.

On July 26th, Gage endeavors to arrange for the money exchange values. He orders that six livres tournois shall be equal to eight shillings, or ten sols of Montreal money.

On July 31st, Gage has his mind on the repair of the fortifications, “seeing that they are falling into ruin and wishing to carry on the old regulations for the common good, following in this time of uncertainty, the ancient usages, which are not opposed to the service of the king,” and therefore he ordered that there shall be imposed every year commencing with 1762, a sum, of which a third shall be paid by the Seminary of St. Sulpice and the other two-thirds by the regular and secular communities and the inhabitants of the said Town of Montreal, for repairs to commence in the following spring, but that the gate, on which they are working, shall be made perfect this year, and “that the said imposition, for which the money shall be remitted to a person named by the Chambre of Militia of the said Montreal, shall not surpass the sum of 6,000 livres each year” and shall continue until the entire repair of the said enclosure is made, at the end of which repairs, the present ordinance shall remain null and void.

On August 3d, Gage seeing that different standards of weights and measures were being used, and to prevent frauds slipping into the commercial life of the city, established that, in Montreal, the English standard yard measure should be used according to the standard to be kept by the “major of the place.” This regulation it was hoped would suit both the English and French.

IN THE DAYS OF THE OLD REGIME

St. Amable Street, a narrow thoroughfare west of the lower part of Jaques Cartier Square and near the spot where the Chateau de Vaudreuil once stood, was a fashionable quarter in the gay days before the “Capitulation.” The house marked by a projecting sign “The Woodbine” is said to have been the site of a saloon for two hundred years.

On October 18th he has to settle the prices, which the bakers of the town should charge for various kinds of bread.

On November 15th, foreseeing the future possibilities of Montreal trade, Governor Gage issued an ordinance for the establishment of a Customs House and he orders Thomas Lambs to be recognized as its director, and Richard Oakes as the visitor of the said Custom House in Montreal.

The following will interest Montreal merchants of today, being significant of the first loosening of restrictions upon Montreal on the part of Quebec. “All ship owners and others interested in trade are warned that all of the vessels coming from Europe or the colonies charged on account of merchants and others, who wish to come there to do business, can follow their destinations up to the city of Montreal without being discharged and re-charged with merchandise at Quebec under any pretext whatever, unless they are suspected of carrying goods of contraband, in the design of making illicit trade.”

On the 7th of January, 1763, regulations forbidding excess speed of the carriages and horses in the streets of Montreal and suburbs had to be laid down.

On the 4th of April Gage issued an ordinance establishing the Custom House at Montreal, with regulations to the captains of ships and officers, sailors and others to carry out the regulations issued, which show that all the paraphernalia and customary duty of ships reporting to the customs, avoiding smuggling, etc., were now full of vigour. Montreal was beginning to be a port of some pretensions.

All these regulations show that the British authorities, while affirming the customs of the country and maintaining the law, as known by the people and administered by their own men of ability and learning, the captains of the militia, of whom many were of the noblesse, providing progressive trade regulations, required for the development of the port and of the up-country commerce, of which the headquarters were at Montreal, were wise rulers.

The care with which the inhabitants were instructed in the knowledge of political events happening outside of their own sphere, the participation in their own judicial code by their own officers, thus beginning, as it were, to be permitted for the first time to participate in their duty of taking part in the government, the justice with which they were treated by the conquerors, the faithful fulfilment of dues for service received, brought about a unity with the English soldiery and the new governors, that disposed the conquered people to feel little regret at the departure of the French Régime from Canada.

Many there were, who were still borne up by the hope that the expected peace would restore Canada to France, but the majority were indifferent and if anything glad to have things remain as they were. The position at Montreal may be summed up in the words of General Gage’s report to Amherst, dated March 20, 1762, sent on to London the same year.[5]

“I feel the highest satisfaction that I am able to inform you that during my command of this government I have made it my constant care and attention that the Canadians should be treated agreeable to His Majesty’s kind and humane intentions. No invasion on their property or assault on their person has gone unpunished. All reproaches on their subjection by the fate of arms, revilings on their customs or country and all reflections on their religion, have been discountenanced and forbid. No distinction has been made between the Briton and Canadian, but equally regarded as subjects of the same prince. The soldiers live peaceably with the inhabitants and they reciprocally acquire an affection for each other.”

Those who know the British soldier will not be surprised to hear that in the distress that fell upon the French Canadians in 1761, mostly through the non-payment of the obligations incurred by the French government, for the redemption of the paper money not yet liquidated since the capitulation, the soldiers gave each one a day’s provisions monthly to relieve the immediate distress. Quebec suffered most. Montreal merchants came to the rescue and swelled the general subscription lists.

As Governor Gage was on the spot, his official report may be further largely quoted as that of an historian of Montreal. After the above opening remarks on the amicable relations existing between the French-Canadians and British, he continues: “The Indians have been treated on the same principles of humanity. They have had immediate justice for all their wrongs and no tricks or artifices have hitherto been attempted to defraud them in their trade.”

He sends a return of the present state of the troops and artillery and a report of the fortifications. Speaking of those of Montreal he notes: “Upon a height within the city is a small square work of wood, completed since the capitulation, provided with a few pieces of artillery and capable of containing seventy or eighty men.”

“The soil produces all sorts of summer grains. In some parts of the government the wheat is sown in autumn. Every kind of pulse and other vegetables to which I may add some fruits, viz., apples, pears, plums, melons, etc. Cider is made here, but as yet in small quantities. In general every fruit tree hardy enough to withstand the severity of the winter will produce in the summer, which affords sufficient heat to bring most kinds of fruit to maturity.”

Reporting as befits one stationed at the center and headquarters of the fur trade on the profits to the French king from the posts he says, “I must conclude His Majesty gained very little from this commerce.”

He then records what must have been of great importance to the interests of the British merchants of Montreal desirous of up-country trade. “Immediately after we became masters of this country all monopolies were abolished and all incumbrances upon trade were removed. The traders chose their posts without the obligation of purchasing them and I can by no means think the French management in giving exclusive grants of trade at particular posts for the sake of the sale thereof or the sale of permits to trade at the free posts worthy our imitation. The Indians, of course, paid dearer for their goods and the trade in general must have been injured by the monopolies.”

Summing up the gain to France of Canada he says: “The only immediate importance and advantage the French king derived from Canada was the preventing the extension of the British colonies, the consumption of the commodities and manufactures of France and the trade of pelletry. She had no doubt views to further advantages that the country might in time supply her with hemp, cordage, iron, masts and generally all kinds of naval stores. The people in general seemed well enough disposed to their new masters.

“The only causes of dislike which I can discover proceed from the fear of money, and the difference of religion. I understand Canada to be on the same footing in respect of this money as all the French colonies and if France pays any of them I don’t see how she can avoid paying the bills of exchange drawn from Canada in the same proportion as she pays the rest. It is the Canadians only who would be sufferers by an exception, as Canadian bills to a very large amount are in the possession of French merchants and the rest may be sent to France and nobody be able to distinguish which is French and which Canadian property.”

Speaking of the second cause of dislike, the difference of religion, he says: “The people having enjoyed a free and undisturbed exercise of their religion ever since the capitulation of their country, their fears in that particular are much abated, but there still remains a jealousy. It is to be hoped that in time this jealousy will wear off and certainly in this, much will depend upon the clergy. Perhaps methods may be found hereafter to supply the curés of this country with priests well affected. But whilst Canada is stocked as she is now with corps of priests detached from seminaries in France, on whom they depend and to whom they pay obedience, it is natural to conceive that neither the priests nor those they can influence will ever bear that love and affection to a British government which His Majesty’s auspicious reign would otherwise engage from the Canadians as well as from his other subjects.”

In passing it may be noted that Gage’s fears were never realized, for to the Canadian clergy is due the credit of having saved Canada to English rule, as will be seen afterwards. A last quotation is interesting as bearing on the question of the exodus in 1760 after the capitulation. “No persons have left this government to go to France except those who held military and civil employment under the French king. Nor do I apprehend any emigration at the peace, being persuaded that the present inhabitants will remain under the British dominion. I perceive none preparing to leave the government or that seem inclined to do it unless it is a few ladies whose husbands are already in France, and they propose to leave the country when peace is made, if their husbands should not rather choose to return to Canada.”

Meanwhile the peace was eagerly looked forward to. The proclamations of the 26th of November, given from the Palace of St. James in London, having reference to the preliminaries for peace and the cessation of hostilities, prepared the minds of all for further intelligence. This was eventually given by Thomas Gage from his Château of Montreal on the 17th of May, 1763, in which the definitive treaty of peace made between their Brittannic and very Christian and Catholic majesties, signed on the 6th of February, and ratified on the 10th of March, was made known. On this occasion Gage indicated to the people the chief portions bearing upon their rights, especially that of the exercise of their religion according to the rights of the Roman church “as far as the laws of Great Britain permit,” and secondly that whereby the inhabitants of His Christian Majesty had permission to leave Canada in safety and liberty, the limit fixed for this emigration being the space of eighteen months, to count from the day of the exchange of the treaty. He communicated to the captains of his government a letter from Monseigneur de Choiseul, which had reference to the payment of debts due and relating to the redemption of the paper money, which was still in circulation, although the English governors sought to prohibit it. It was set forth that the Most Christian King would pay the sum due to the new subjects of Great Britain, but that the amount must not be confounded with the money held by the French subjects.

On May 27, the governor of Montreal issued through the captains of Militia of Montreal regulations concerning the liquidation of this paper money, directing the captains to make a declaration of the amount in their possession. They were to place the amount held by them in the hand of Pierre Panet, Notaire et Greffier of Montreal, appointed for this purpose, between the first and thirtieth of June, designating the character of the notes, with the name of the holder and other safeguards to be observed, upon which certificates of receipt would be given. Care was to be taken that the money, which they brought, should belong to them and that they did not lend their names to anyone. Fault in this regard would lead to prosecution for falsifying. For this transaction a fee of five sous was to be paid for every thousand livres so deposited. Money was received from 7 o’clock in the morning to midday and from 2 o’clock to 5, except on Sundays and holidays. This must have caused great excitement in the city. Great care was taken to instruct the habitants of the value of their money and warn them against becoming the victims of speculators.[6]

Meanwhile preparations were being made for the removal of General Gage from the post, which he had filled with excellent judgment and with habitual prudence.

On August 5th, Gage issued some further ordinances regulating the transport of merchandise and ammunition to the savages, seeing that these latter had again been making incursions into the country.

On August 18 he upheld a complaint of the established merchants against the peddlers who were underselling the merchants in the streets, forbidding anyone to sell in the public places of the city, the streets and even the squares, river banks and suburbs.

On the 16th of September he issued an ordinance concerning certain uncultivated lands in the districts of the Government, which had been granted with titles of concessions “en fief” under the former régime, and on which there had been no ground broken as yet, on account of wars or other events. Those having these should present their credentials or applications at once, so as to have them recognized, to avoid any conflict with future concessions.

General Gage left Montreal with the esteem of all. He was presented with an affectionate address by the captains of the Chambre de Milice, over which he had presided as the Chief Judge, and he replied to them by a letter on October 15, 1763, begging them to accept his testimony in recognition of the services which they had rendered to the king of the country, trusting that they would continue the same for the public good and that their service, for which they had already required so great a reputation among their own compatriots, would not fail to draw upon them the good-will and protection of the king. Certainly Gage might safely boast, as he had done in his letter to Amherst, of the peaceful state of Montreal under his government. He had helped to forge the links of intimacy that bound the noblesse and the British officials, the militia and the military officers, which made for the harmonious transition between the old and the new régimes. Whether or not the alliance was an unmixed blessing is shown by subsequent events.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Before leaving, General Amherst appointed military governors for three districts. Their tenures of office were as follows: District of Montreal, General Thomas Gage, September, 1760, to October, 1763; Colonel Ralph Burton, October, 1763, to August, 1764. District of Quebec, General James Murray, September, 1760, to August, 1764. District of Three Rivers, Colonel Ralph Burton, September, 1760, to May, 1762; Colonel F. Haldimand, May, 1762, to March, 1763; Colonel Ralph Burton, March, 1763, to October, 1763; Colonel F. Haldimand, October, 1763, to August, 1764.

[2] The French runs: “Et nous a laissé un gage precieux, etc.” The word “pledge” instead of “gage” in the English translation destroys the delicate double entendre and compliment, evidently meant in the French version.

[3] The first mayor of Montreal.

[4] For the above abstracts of the ordinance of October 13th and October 17th see “The Canadian Militia,” by Captain Ernest J. Chambers, 1907.

[5] This was prepared for Pitt according to the order of Lord Egremont in his dispatch to Sir Jeffrey Amherst of December 12, 1761, in which the king approves of the system of military government established in the districts of Quebec, Three Rivers and Montreal. He instructs Amherst to send for His Majesty’s information a full account of the newly acquired country. In response to this command communicated to Murray, Burton and Gage, reports from the latter were prepared and forwarded to Amherst. These reports were among the documents submitted to the Board of Trade for their information in preparing a plan of government for the territories ceded to Britain by the treaty of Paris of 1763.

[6] The same arrangements were carried out at Quebec and Three Rivers and Murray reported that the total amount of the paper money in circulation was nearly 17,000,000 of livres, that, in the government of Montreal alone, being 7,980,298-8-4. Kingsford, History of Canada, Vol. V, page 181, remarks: “An attempt to depreciate the value of this paper was made by the court of France in which it was pointed out that from the discredit to which it had fallen it had been purchased at 80 to 90 per cent discount; that it did not represent the value of what had been received, owing to the high price paid for the articles obtained; that the bills of exchange of 1759 were paid in part and that bills that remained were only such as had been issued after this payment. The British reply was that the court of France, having been the cause of the discredit alleged had no right to profit by it, that the prices paid for supplies had been established by the intendant, that the date of the ordinances could not constitute a reason why they should not be paid, that such paper money was the currency of the colony issued by France, consequently the country was responsible for it.”

CHAPTER III

THE DEFINITIVE TREATY OF PARIS

1763

THE NEW CIVIL GOVERNMENT

THE DEFINITIVE TREATY OF PEACE—SECTION RELATING TO CANADA—CATHOLIC DISABILITIES AND THE PHRASE “AS FAR AS THE LAWS OF GREAT BRITAIN PERMIT”—THE TREATY RECEIVED WITH DELIGHT BY THE “OLD” SUBJECTS BUT WITH DISAPPOINTMENT BY THE “NEW”—THE INEVITABLE STRUGGLES BEGIN, TO CULMINATE IN THE QUEBEC ACT OF 1774—OPPOSITION AT MONTREAL, THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE SEIGNEURS—THE NEW CIVIL GOVERNMENT IN ACTION—CIVIL COURTS AND JUSTICES OF THE PEACE ESTABLISHED—MURRAY’S ACTION IN ALLOWING “ALL SUBJECTS OF THE COLONY” TO BE CALLED UPON TO ACT AS JURORS VIOLENTLY OPPOSED BY THE BRITISH PARTY AS UNCONSTITUTIONAL—THE PROTEST OF THE QUEBEC GRAND JURY—SUBSEQUENT MODIFICATIONS IN 1766 TO SUIT ALL PARTIES—GOVERNOR MURRAY’S COMMENT ON MONTREAL, “EVERY INTRIGUE TO OUR DISADVANTAGE WILL BE HATCHED THERE”—MURRAY AND THE MONTREAL MERCHANTS—A TIME OF MISUNDERSTANDING. NOTE: LIST OF SUBSEQUENT GOVERNORS.

Before proceeding further it will be well to set before the reader some special portions of “The definitive treaty of peace and friendship between His Britannic Majesty, the Most Christian King, and the king of Spain, concluded at Paris the 10th day of February, 1763, to which the king of Portugal acceded on the same day.”

Section IV relating to Canada was as follows:

“His Most Christian Majesty renounces all pretensions which he has heretofore formed or might have formed to Nova Scotia or Acadia in all its parts, and guarantees the whole of it and with all its dependencies to the King of Great Britain. Moreover his most Christian Majesty accedes and guarantees to his said Britannic Majesty in full right, Canada with all its dependencies as well as the island of Cape Breton and all the other islands and coasts in the Gulph and river of St. Lawrence and in general everything that depends on the said countries, lands, islands and coasts with the sovereignty, property, possessions and all rights acquired by treaty or otherwise, which the Most Christian King and the crown of France have had till now over the said countries, lands, islands, places, coasts and their inhabitants, so that the Most Christian King cedes and makes over the whole to the said King and to the Crown of Great Britain and that in the most ample manner and form, without restriction and without any liberty to depart from the said cession and guarantee under any pretense, or to disturb Great Britain in the possessions above mentioned.

“His Britannic Majesty on his side agrees to grant the liberty of the Catholick religion to the inhabitants of Canada; he will in consequence give the most precise and most effectual orders that his new Roman Catholick subjects may profess the worship of their religion according to the rights of the Romish church as far as the laws of Great Britain permit. His Britannic Majesty further agrees that the French inhabitants or others who have been subjects of the Most Christian King in Canada may retire with all safety and freedom whenever they shall think proper and may sell their estates provided it be to the subjects of His Britannic Majesty, and bring away their effects as well as their persons without being restrained in their emigration under any pretense whatever except that of debts or of criminal prosecutions; the term limited for this emigration shall be fixed to the space of eighteen months to be computed from the day of the exchange of the ratification of the present treaty.”

The definitive treaty of Paris of February 10, 1763, proclaimed by Governor Gage in Montreal on May 17th, was received with delight by the English merchants, for they looked forward eagerly for the civil government to be set up in which they, but a handful, hoped by the right of conquest to assume the high hand. They had long chafed under what they, more than the “Canadians,” chose to call military despotism. They had looked upon the amicable temporary participation of the Canadians in their own government, with eyes of envy. They were of the same metal as the British merchants of Quebec who, relying on their undoubted energy in developing the commercial interests of the country, and in their self-satisfaction, so aggrandized their own importance that they wished to rule solely, so that they early petitioned his Majesty for a representative assembly in this province as in all the other provinces of His Majesty. “There are,” they said, “a sufficient number of loyal and interested Protestants outside the military officers to form a legislative assembly, and the new subjects of His Majesty, if he should believe it proper, could be authorized to elect Protestants without having to take oath against their conscience.” (See constitutional documents, Doughty & Shortt.)

There were only about two hundred Protestants, and these not all educated or upright men, in the whole country at this time—in Quebec 144, in Montreal 56. Yet they desired to represent the whole people and to exclude the “new subjects” from every position of trust under the new civil government. At the time of Murray’s recall in 1766 they had reached the number of 450.

The Canadians were not prepared for the new turn of the tide. In consequence we shall see that between 1763 and 1774 the country was in an unsettled state, owing to the conflict inevitable between the two forces of the old and new régimes striving for recognition.

Under the military law the “new subjects” had been entrusted with a share in the government. The English rulers were officers and gentlemen who respected the claims of the Seigneurs as well as of the simple habitants, and moreover their religion was held in honour. They had been led to believe that this happy state would continue. Gage and Murray in their report to Egremont seem to hint how they were hoodwinked. “Canadians are very ignorant and extremely tenacious of their religion. Nothing can contribute to make them staunch subjects to His Majesty as the new government giving them every reason to imagine no alteration is to be attempted in that point.”

Thus when the “new subjects” came to understand that they were only to “profess the worship of their religion according to the rights of the Romish church as far as the laws of Great Britain permit,” and that that permission was to be interpreted along the lines of the Catholic civil disabilities in England, they felt that they were proscribed men who had been ensnared by roseate promises of a wise interpretation of British liberty to be extended to them as new subjects.

The situation was impossible and at once there began the inevitable struggle and the long series of accommodations that were eventually to culminate in the Quebec act of 1774, the Magna Charta of French Canadians. The significance of this act cannot be understood unless the religious proscription in the policy of the new government be understood. Hence the opposition among the Seigneurs in Montreal, their headquarters, was secretly fostered, which later alarmed Carleton so much, as we shall see. The French Canadian clergy and Seigneurs of Montreal looked upon the new change of government as an attempt to Anglicize their religion as well as their laws. And they were not far wrong. In a letter to Governor Murray, the secretary of state, Lord Egremont, wrote from Whitehall on August 13, 1763, acquainting him that the King had been graciously pleased to confer on him the civil government of Canada and making special reference to the qualification, “as far as the laws of Great Britain permit,” which laws, he explains, prohibit absolutely all Popish hierarchy in any of the dominions belonging to the Crown of Great Britain and can only admit of a toleration of the exercise of that religion; this matter was clearly understood in the negotiation of the exercise of that religion; the French ministers proposed to insert the words comme ci-devant in order that the Romish religion should continue to be exercised in the same manner as under their government; and they did not give up their point until they were plainly told that it would be deceiving them to admit those words, for the king had not the power to tolerate that religion in any other manner than as far as the laws of Great Britain permit. “These laws must be your guide in any disputes that may arise on this subject.”

The intention was precisely to tolerate for a time the Romish religion and gradually to supplant it. The royal instructions to Governor Murray, given from the court of St. James by King George on the 7th day of December, 1763, leave no doubt on this head. The intention to suppress the natural growth of the Catholic church in Canada by crippling it forever at its fountain head by giving no guarantee of the recognition of the Episcopal power and jurisdiction, had already been foreshadowed in the two clauses submitted by Vaudreuil in the terms of the capitulation of Montreal.

Article XXX: “If by the treaty of peace Canada shall remain in the power of His Britannic Majesty, His Most Christian Majesty shall continue to name the bishop of the colony, who shall always be of the Roman communion and under whose authority the people shall exercise the Roman religion: ‘Refused.’”

Article XXXI: “The bishop shall, in case of need, establish new parishes and provide for the building of his cathedral and his Episcopal palace; and in the meantime he shall have the liberty to dwell in towns or parishes as he shall judge proper. He shall be at liberty to visit his diocese with the ordinary ceremonies and exercise also the jurisdiction which his predecessor exercised under the French dominion, save that an oath of fidelity or a promise to do nothing contrary to His Britannic Majesty’s service, may be required of him: ‘This article is comprised under the foregoing.’”

The reason for this was signalized in the instructions later to Murray, Carleton and Haldimand in the clause beginning:

“And to the end that the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the lord bishop of London may take place in our province under your government as conveniently as possible,” etc.

Section XXXII reads: “You are not to admit of any ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the See of Rome or of any other foreign jurisdiction whatsoever in the province under your government.”

Section XXXIII: “And to the end that the Church of England may be established both in principle and practice and that the said inhabitants may by degrees be induced to embrace the Protestant religion and their children be brought up in the principles of it, we do hereby declare it to be our intention when the said province shall have been accurately surveyed and divided into townships, districts, precincts or parishes in such manner as shall be hereinafter directed, all possible encouragement shall be given to the erecting of Protestant schools in the same districts, townships and precincts by settling, appointing and allotting proper quantities of land for that purpose and also for a glebe and maintenance for a Protestant minister and Protestant schoolmaster, and you are to consider and report to us by our Commissions for Trade and Plantation by what other means the Protestant religion may be promoted, established and encouraged in our province under your government.”

This instruction to Murray is repeated in those to Governor Carleton, 1768, and to Governor Haldimand, 1778.

Let us see how the civil government worked out. It was proclaimed on April 10, 1764, the delay being caused to allow the French Canadians the eighteen months, stipulated by the treaty of Paris, in which they might leave the country. Murray had been appointed governor-general of the province of Quebec by the commission of November 21, 1763, and the instructions were dated on December 7th. But Murray had not promulgated the new dignity accorded him till on September 17th, 1764, the first great act of the new régime being opened by his ordinance establishing civil courts. It may be briefly stated as follows: there was to be a Superior Court of judicature or King’s Bench, which should be held at Quebec twice a year at the Hilary term commencing on January 1st and at Trinity term on June 21st. Its president should be the chief justice of Canada. This was William Gregory. This man, with the attorney-general, Suckling, were soon removed for incompetency. Later in 1766 a Michaelmas term was added. Montreal and Three Rivers were to have the chief justices’ court of assizes and jail delivery after Hilary once a year.

Strangely enough, though not unnaturally, Murray had inserted a clause in the act which was afterwards violently objected to by the English merchants as going beyond his commission, viz., that all the subjects of the colony could be called upon without distinction to take their place on the jury. Murray had to explain this to the English government and accordingly with the copy of the above act sent, he remarked to the following effect: “As there are only two hundred Protestant subjects in the province, the greater part of which is composed of disbanded soldiers of small fortunes and of little capacity, it is considered unjust to prevent the Roman Catholic new subjects from taking part on juries, for such an exclusion would constitute the said two hundred Protestants perpetual judges of the lives and fortunes not only of the eighty thousand new subjects but of all the military in this province. Moreover, if the Canadians are not admitted to juries many will emigrate.” Murray felt that his position might not carry, for he adds: “This arrangement is nothing else than a temporary expedient to leave affairs in their present state until the pleasure of His Majesty on this critical and difficult point be made known.”

Besides the superior court there should be an inferior court of “Common Pleas” to settle civil cases involving sums of beyond ten louis. Beyond twenty louis there was appeal allowed to the superior court. If desired there could be juries called in this court. French advocates and proctors could practice in this court, though not in the superior court. Murray explains the liberty taken by him in allowing this: “Because we have not as yet a single English advocate or proctor understanding the French language.” He also observed that the court of common pleas was established solely for the protection of the French Canadian.

In addition to the other two courts, Justices of the Peace were established at Quebec and Montreal who should hold quarter sessions. These officers of the magistracy, according to Murray’s instructions, had to be Protestants. One justice was to have jurisdiction in disputes to the value of five pounds; two were required for cases to the value of ten pounds. Three justices should form a quorum to hold quarter sessions, to adjudicate in cases from ten pounds to thirty pounds. Two justices were to sit weekly in rotation in Quebec and Montreal.

Finally there should be elected in every parish in the country bailiffs and sub-bailiffs. The elections were to take place every 21st day of June and they were to enter upon their duties on September 29th. “We call them bailiffs,” commenced Murray, “because the new subjects understand the word better than that of constables.” The word constable, will, however, better explain the nature of their multifarious duties.

We now have a view of the change in the law courts in Montreal: a yearly session of the king’s court and of the court of common pleas, quarter sessions held by the justices of the peace, and in the parishes, the bailiffs or constables.

Hardly had the courts erected by the act of September 7th been held, than the grand jury of Quebec protested vehemently at the new courts and especially at the privileges given the new subjects. Their opposition was expected by Murray for his comment, sent with the act, ran: that some of the English merchants residing here of whom only ten or a dozen at most possess any settled property in this province, are very dissatisfied at the privileges granted to the Canadians to act on juries; the reason of this is very evident as their influence is restrained by the measure.

Britishers on the jury who thought the favours to Catholics unconstitutional were only victims of their narrow prejudices formed by the prevailing intolerance then existing in England and its colonies. The toleration to Catholics according to the phrase “as far as the laws of Great Britain allow” was not the wide freedom we see nowadays.

A protest against allowing the latter class to practice in the courts or to serve on juries was made early by the Protestant members of the grand jury of Quebec on October 16, 1764, as follows: “That by the definitive treaty the Roman religion was only tolerated in the province of Quebec as far as the laws of Great Britain had met. It was and is enacted by the third act, January 1st, chapter V, section 8, ‘No Papist or Popish recusant convict shall practice the common law as a counsellor, clerk, attorney or solicitor, nor shall practice the civic law as advocate or proctor, nor practice physick, nor be an apothecary, nor shall be a judge, minister, clerk or steward of or in any court, nor shall bear any office or charge as captain, master, or governor, or bear any office of charge of, or, in any ship, castle or fortress, but be utterly disabled for the same, and every person herein shall forfeit one hundred pounds, half to the king and half to them that shall sue.’ We therefore believe that the admitting of persons of Romish religion, who own the authority, supremacy and jurisdiction of the church of Rome, as jurors is an open violation of our most sacred laws and liberties, tending to the utter subversion of the Protestant religion and His Majesty’s power, authority, right and possession of the province to which we belong.” Later these jurors pretended that they had never meant to exclude Catholic jurors, but only as jurors when Protestants were contestants. The above argument shows their original intrinsigeance.

Later, in February, 1766, modifications were introduced; when the contestants were British the jury should be British; when Canadians, Canadians; when the contestants were mixed the jury should also be mixed. These conflicts were inevitable in unsettled times when two peoples were of different mental outlooks, politically, racially and religiously. The melting pot of time will solve such difficulties, when the viewpoints of both parties would be more sympathetically understood. In the meantime the historical situation at the time was painful.

Governor Murray’s letter to the Lords of Trade, written a few days after the presentment of the jury is a fair and statesman-like view of the difficult period.

“Quebec, 29th of October, 1764.

“* * * Little, very little, will content the new subjects, but nothing will satisfy the licentious fanaticks trading here, but the expulsion of the Canadians who are perhaps the bravest and best race upon the globe, a race who, could they be indulged with a few privileges which the laws of England deny to Roman Catholics at home, would soon get the better of every national antipathy to their conquerors and become the most faithful and most useful set of men in this American empire.

“I flatter myself there will be some remedy found out even in the laws for the relief of this people. If so, I am positive the popular clamours in England will not prevent the humane heart of the king from following its own dictates. I am confident, too, my royal master will not blame the unanimous opinion of his council here for the ordinance establishing the courts of justice, as nothing less could be done to prevent great numbers from emigrating directly and certain I am, unless the Canadians are admitted on juries and are allowed judges and lawyers who understand their language, His Majesty will lose the greatest part of this valuable people.”

His letter immediately continues with the following allusion which helps us to place the position of Montreal in the above general constitutional crisis then affecting the colony. “I beg leave further,” says Murray, “to represent to your Lordship that a lieutenant governor at Montreal is absolutely necessary. That town is in the heart of the most populous part of the provinces. It is surrounded by the Indian nations and is 180 miles from the capital. It is there that the most opulent priests live and there are settled the greatest part of the French noblesse. Consequently every intrigue to our disadvantage will be hatched there.”

A postscript to this letter to the Lords of Trade and Plantations, gives Murray’s appreciation of some of the great commercial class: “P.S.—I have been informed that Messrs. William McKenzie, Alexander McKenzie and William Grant have been soliciting their friends in London to prevail upon Your Lordship to get them admitted into his Majesty’s council of this province. I think it my duty to acquaint Your Lordships that the first of these men is a notorious smuggler and a turbulent man, the second a weak man of little character and the third a conceited boy. In short it will be impossible to do business with any of them.”

This postscript indicates the strain and bitter personal relations between Murray and some of the British commercial element in the colony, who finally succeeded in obtaining his recall.

Unfortunately, Murray was not always as discreet or as just in the consideration of his opponents, as his position justified. He was a soldier rather than a peace maker. In addition, others besides the British merchant did not see eye to eye with him in the interpretation of the new Treaty of Paris or in the application of English laws in Canada.

They retorted as did the Quebec traders, that the governor “doth frequently treat them with a rage and rudeness of language and demeanour as dishonourable to the trust he holds of Your Majesty as painful to those who suffer from it.”

In commenting on this period, Prof. F.P. Walton, dean of the faculty of Law at McGill University, has the following criticism (Cf. University Magazine, April, 1908):

He is speaking of the charge against Murray’s interpretation of the new situation of the application of the new civil government.

“It is probable,” he says, “that at no period in the history of Canada were legal questions so much discussed among the mass of the population as in the first ten years of the English régime. This is not surprising when we consider that the question whether the English or the French law was in force in the Province was one of no little difficulty. It was contended with much plausibility that Murray’s Ordinances were of no legal validity because, under the King’s proclamation, legislative authority in the Province was to be exercised only by the governor with the consent of a council and assembly, and that no assembly had ever been summoned. This is not the place for a discussion of this subject. I prefer the view of those who maintain that the English law was introduced by the proclamation of 1763. The case of Campbell and Hall is sufficient authority for the proposition, that the King had the power without parliament to alter the law of Quebec. It seems to me that the natural construction of the proclamation itself is, that the King intended to introduce the English law there and then. Murray, as Masères says in his very convincing argument, ‘meant only to erect and constitute courts of judicature to administer a system of laws already in being, to wit, the laws of England.’ The whole affair was to a great extent a misunderstanding. The English government had no intention to force the English laws on an unwilling people. They understood that they were giving ‘Home Rule’ to the Province of Quebec, and expected that the Canadians would abrogate such parts of the English law as they did not consider suitable, and would re-enact the portions of the old French law which they desired to retain. They did not foresee that, owing to the impracticability of calling an assembly, the Province would be left without any authority competent to legislate.”

It was, indeed, a time of great misunderstanding.

NOTE

GOVERNORS UNDER BRITISH RULE

As it may be convenient henceforth to omit mention of the advent of successive governors, this list is appended for the purpose of reference.

LIEUTENANT GOVERNORS OF QUEBEC

(After Confederation)

• The Rt. Hon. Sir Narcisse Fortunat Belleau
• The Rt. Hon. Sir Narcisse Fortunat Belleau (re-appointed)
• Hon. Rene Edouard Caron
• Hon. Luc Letellier de St. Just
• Hon. Theodore Robitaille
• Hon. Louis François Rodique Masson
• Hon. Auguste Real Angers
• Hon. Sir J.A. Chapleau
• Hon. L.A. Jetté
• Hon. L.A. Jetté (re-appointed)
• Hon. Sir Charles A.P. Pelletier
• Hon. Sir François Langelier

CHAPTER IV

CIVIC GOVERNMENT UNDER JUSTICES OF THE PEACE

1764

RALPH BURTON, GOVERNOR OF MONTREAL, BECOMES MILITARY COMMANDANT—FRICTION AMONG MILITARY COMMANDERS—JUSTICES OF PEACE CREATED—FIRST QUARTER SESSIONS—MILITARY VERSUS CITIZENS—THE WALKER OUTRAGE—THE TRIAL—WALKER BOASTS OF SECURING MURRAY’S RECALL—MURRAY’S DEFENSE AFTER HIS RECALL—THE JUSTICES OF THE PEACE ABUSE THEIR POWER—CENSURED BY THE COUNCIL AT QUEBEC—COURT OF COMMON PLEAS ESTABLISHED—PIERRE DU CALVET—CARLETON’S DESCRIPTION OF THE “DISTRESSES OF THE CANADIANS.”

The governor of Three Rivers, Ralph Burton, proclaimed to the Montrealers on October 29, 1763, his nomination by General Amherst as governor of Montreal in succession to General Gage. He announced that the civil justice would be administered by the same courts as hitherto. His ordinances have nothing striking beyond one ordering all who had gunpowder in their homes, and there were many, to take it to the powder magazine, and another announcing that on April 24, 1764, all who in accordance with the definitive treaty of peace wished to leave for France must within three weeks send in their declarations with their exact descriptions and the number of their household they propose to take with them. In August, Murray reported that only 270 men, women and children, mostly officers and their families, left the colony.

On August 10th military rule ended in Montreal but Burton continued on as military commandant.

Burton resigned his governorship in July, 1764. As the position of governor was not to be continued at Montreal or Quebec, no one succeeded him. He was confirmed, however, as Brigadier. Yet, although in command of a few troops, he refused to recognize Murray as his military superior, hence complications and conflicts arose. Murray wrote in indignation that if Burton were removed it would be better for himself and everybody. Murray is accused by his enemies of quarreling with everybody, but it is evidently hard on a governor general to have his wings clipped by having under him in a civil capacity a commander who took his orders from General Gage of New York. Where the military rights and civil duties of Burton at Montreal or of Haldimand at Three Rivers and Murray at Quebec, began and ended, was a harassing doubt to all three.

On January 11, 1764, letters patent were sent to the first justices of the peace at Montreal, including Moses Hazen, J. Grant, John Rowe, Francis McKay, Thomas Lambe, F. Knife, John Burke, Thomas Walker and others. Among these were two Swiss Protestants, Catholics being excluded from the office as yet, owing to the difficulty of their subscribing to the religious test not being yet solved.

The first general quarter sessions of the peace was held on December 27, 1764, and there were present Moses Hazen, J. Dumas, F. McKay, Thomas Lambe and Francis Knife. The court adjourned. The first case was one of battery and assault.

On August 10, 1764, military rule ceased. The new civil government brought to a head much of the ill feeling existing in the city. The tables were now turned, the merchant class, already become the magistrates, were now in the ascendant and rancours prevailed. The old-time antipathies between the soldiers and citizens at New York and Boston were being reproduced in Montreal. There were no barracks, although the troops had been there four years. Consequently the system of billeting became necessary and caused continual annoyance.

The famous Walker outrage grew out of one of these troubles. Captain Fraser had billeted a Captain Payne on a French-Canadian. In the house lodged one of the new justices of the peace who claimed exemption for the house. In reply he was told that the justices’ rooms were exempt but not the other rooms, and on Payne’s persistence in claiming the billet, the magistrate refused to yield his possession. The case was brought before Justice Walker, who, as a magistrate, ordered Payne to vacate the rooms and on his refusing to comply committed him to jail for contempt. He was released on bail. Two days afterwards, on the 6th of December, 1764, occurred the “Walker outrage,” which has been described more or less fully in various histories of Canada, sometimes incorrectly.

Walker was an Englishman who had lived for many years in Boston, coming to Montreal some time after the close of the war in 1760, where he engaged in trade with the upper country. He was a bold, aggressive man, full of democratic notions, who set himself up as the agent of the people, opposed the actions of Governor Murray in every way, and afterwards had endeavoured to use his influence to have Murray recalled. In many ways he showed that he was no great friend of the Military then established in Montreal.

The outrage on him, dated on the night of the 6th, he attributed to the Military, and was the occasion of the seizure of “John Fraser, Esq.,” Deputy Grand Paymaster; “John Campbell, Esq.,” now Captain of His Majesty’s Twenty-seventh Regiment; “Daniel Disney, Esq.,” now Captain of the Twenty-fourth Regiment; “St. Luke La Corne, Esq.,” (Knight St. Louis), “Samuel Evans,” Lieutenants in His Majesty’s Twenty-eighth Regiment, and “Joseph Howard,” Merchant, all of the City of Montreal, being to their great surprise seized and taken out of their beds in the middle of the night of the 18th inst., November, 1766, by “Edward William Gray, Esq.,” Deputy Provost Martial in and for the district of Montreal, assisted by a party of soldiers with fixed bayonets, and by them hurried down to Quebec, where they were in close custody on the charge of having on or about “the sixth day of December, 1764, feloniously and with malice forethought, and by lying in wait assaulted, wounded and cut off part of the ear of ‘Thomas Walker, Esq.,’ of Montreal in this Province, with intention in so doing to disfigure the said ‘Thomas Walker.’” The informant was “George Magovock” late soldier in the Twenty-eighth Regiment of foot, making oath before “William Hey,” Chief Justice in and for the Province of Quebec.

The Chief Justice was petitioned by the prisoners to be released on bail, but apparently the influence of Walker was so great, that this was not easy. The whole of Montreal was in a great state of irritable excitement, a deputation of the members of the Council, the principal merchants of Montreal and the officers of the Fifteenth, Twenty-seventh, Fifty-second and Royal American Regiments entreated the Chief Justice to grant the petition of the prisoners for bail, asking him to interpose his authority and to mitigate the rigour of the law for gentlemen, “whose honors we are so well convinced, that we offer to become their bail until the trial.”

The petition is signed by the following: Colonel Irving, A. Mabane,[1] Thomas Dunn,[1] J. Goldfrap, F. Mounier, T. Mills, Members of the Council; Thomas Ainslie, Collector of the Customs and Justice of the Peace; J. Marteilhe, J.P.; J. Collins, J.P.; C. Drummond, Comp. of the Customs; J. Porteus, Charles Grant, S. Frazer, J. Woolsey, W. Grant, G. Measam, T. Scott, J. Werden, E. Gray, J. Aitken, Wm. Garett, G. Allsopp, J. Antill, Gridley, H. Boone, J. Watmough, Samuel Jacobs, H. Taylor, F. Grant, S. Lymbery, Amiet, Perras, Dusault, Deplaine, Fleurimont, Fremont, Perrault, Bousseau, Guillemain, Panet, Beaubien, Principal Merchants; La Naudiere, Crois de St. Louis; Captain Grove, Royal Artillery; Colonel Irving, Captain Prescott, Captain-Lieutenant D’Aripe, Lieutenants Mitchel, Lockart, Dunn, Magra, Doctor Roberts, Fifteenth Regiment; Captain Morris, Ensign Winter, Twenty-seventh Regiment; Colonel Jones, Captains Phillips, Williams, Addison, Davidson, Alcock, Geofrey, Lieutenants Neilson, Dinsdale, Smyth, Aderly, Hamilton, Watters, Holland, Hawksley, Adjutant Splain, Ensigns Stubbs, Molesworth, Fifty-second Regiment; Captains Carden, Etherington, Schloser, Tucker, Burin, Rechat, Ensign McKulloch, Royal Americans.

Whatever the whole hubbub was about it was evidently of such importance that the Chief Justice did not see his way to grant the bail, and it was not until two years later that the case came before the Grand Jury in Montreal. Meanwhile the city had been divided in two factions.

On the 28th of February, the cases against all but Captain Disney were thrown out by the Grand Jury,[2] but a true bill was brought against him. This was on a Monday. Francis Masères, who succeeded Suckling as attorney general, prosecuted for the Crown, and Morison, Gregory and Antill defended Town Major Disney.

We may now tell the story in the words of the report of Chief Justice Hey, transmitted to London on his return to Quebec on April 14, 1767.

“The bill against Major Disney being returned on a Monday, I appointed Wednesday for his trial, his Jury, after some few challenges on both sides, was composed of very reputable English merchants residing at Montreal, of very fair characters & as unprejudiced as men could be who had heard so much of so interesting a story.

“The only evidence that affected Major Disney was that of Mr. & Mrs. Walker & Magovock, the substance of which I will take the liberty to state to yr. Lordship as shortly & as truly as my notes & my memory will enable me to do, all the other witnesses speaking to the fact as committed by somebody without any particular knowledge of Major Disney.

“The narrative will perhaps be less perplexed—The house opens with two doors, one a strong one next the street, (within that a sashed one), into the hall where the Family were at supper when the affair began; short on the right hand at the entrance from the street are folding doors which lead into a Parlour, at the further end of which Fronting the Folding doors is ye door of the bed chamber where Mr. Walker keeps his fire arms of which he has great numbers ready loaded. In the hall almost fronting the street doors, are 2 which lead into a kitchen & a back yeard, through which Mrs. Walker & the rest of the family separately made their escape very soon after the entrance of the Ruffians.

“The account which Mr. Walker gave to the Jury upon the trial was that on the 6th of Decr. 1764 at ½ past 8 in the evening Mrs. Walker looked at her watch and said it was time to go to supper—that the cloth was laid in the hall but that he not having been very well that day she was persuading him to stay & eat his supper in the Parlour—that they staid about 10 or 15 minutes in this and other conversation & then went into the hall to supper—that he sat with his back to, & very near the street door—that he had been but a very little time at supper when he heard a rattling of the latch of the door as of Persons wanting to come in in a hurry—that Mrs. Walker said Entre, upon which the outward door was thrown open & thro’ the sash of the inward one he saw a great number of People disguised in various ways, some with little round hats others with their faces blacked, and others with crapes over their faces—that he had time to take so much notice of them as to distinguish 2 Persons whose faces tho’ blacked he was sure he should know again if he saw them—that they burst the inward door & several of them got round to the doors leading to the Parlour as designing to cut off his retreat into that room—that upon turning his head towards that room he received from behind a blow which he believes was given with a broad sword,—that he passed thro’ them into the Parlour receiving many wounds in the passage got to the further end of the room near the chamber door before which stood 2 men who had got before him & prevented his entrance into it—that these 2 with others who had followed him striking and wounding all the way, sett upon him & forced him from the door into window, the curtains of which entangled itself round him and he believes prevented their dashing his brains out against the wall, that he received in the whole no less than 52 contusions besides many cuts with sharp instruments—that he believes during the struggle in the window he was for some little time deprived of his senses, sunk in stupefaction or stunned by some blow, till he heard a voice from the opposite corner of the room say ‘Let me come at him I will dispatch the Villian with my sword’ that this roused him and determined him to sell his life as dear as he could—that ’till this time tho’ he had apprehended & experienced a great deal of violence, he did not think they intended to take away his life because he had seen Major Disney in the outer room & knowing he had done nothing to disoblige him, he did not believe that he would have been amongst them if they had intended to murther him—that he broke from the persons who held him in the window & advanced towards the Part of the room from whence the voice came where 2 persons were standing with their swords in a position ready for making a thrust at him, but does not know whether they actually made a Pass at him or not, that he put by one of their swords with his left hand upon which they both retreated into the corner—that his Eyes at this time being full of blood, he was not capable of distinguishing the features of a face with great accuracy, but from the size & figure & gesture of the person whose sword he parried & from whom he believes the words came, he thought it to be Major Disney—that several of them then seized him at once (one of them in particular taking him up under the right thigh) and carried him towards the fire place with the intention as he believed to throw him upon the fire—that the marks of his bloody fingers were upon the jamb of the chimney—that he turned himself from the fire with great violence & in turning received a blow on his head which the surgeons say must have been given with a Tomahawk—which felled him to the ground & after that a blow upon his Loins which he feels to this day—that then one of them sat or kneeled by him (he lying at his length upon the floor) andeavouring as he imagined to cut his throat—that he resisted it by inclining his head upon his shoulders & putting his hand to the place, a finger of which was cut to the bone—that it was a fortnight before he knew that he had lost his ear, his opinion all along having been that in that operation they intended to cut his throat & believed they had done it—that one of them said the Villian is dead, another Damn him we have done for him, and a third uttered some words but his senses then failed him & he does not recollect what they were.

“This was the whole of the Evidence given by him in Court in the cross-examination great stress was laid upon his positive manner of swearing to Major Disney in disguise upon the transient view which by his own account he had of him, and under the circumstances of terrour and confusion which such an appearance must have occasioned; to which he answered that he had time in the hall before any blow was given to take a distinct view of him, and that he actually did do it, and tho’ it was true he had a crape over his face, yet it was tied so close that he discerned the features and Lineaments of it very perfectly and that he was positive it was Mr. Disney, of his dress other than the crape upon his face he could give no account, and then he was questioned if he had not often declared that he knew nobody but upon slight surprise he said that he remembered Mr. Disney perfectly the next morning, but that he mentioned him to nobody but Mrs. Walker, charging her at the same time to conceal it, because he thought he had suffered by her in discretion in mentioning the name of another Person whose influence with People in Power had prejudiced the inquiry which was then making into the affair.

“Mrs. Walker confirmed all the circumstances of their manner of coming in & swore as directly to Major Disney, that Lieut. Hamilton (as she did for some time believe but has since had occasion to think she was mistaken) was the first that entered that she saw Major Disney among a Groupe of figures very distinctly with a crape over his face and dressed in a Canadian Cotton Night Gown.

“Magovock went thro’ his story as contained in his affidavit a copy of which has been transmitted to your Lordship, not without a manifest confusion of his countenance & a trembling in his voice common to those who have a consciousness that they are telling untruly, & a fear of being detected—his cross examination took a great deal of time in the course of which he contradicted all the other witnesses & himself in circumstances so material that I am persuaded he was not himself present at the transaction.

“Major Disney proved by several witnesses, Dr. Robertson, Madam Landrief, Madam Campbell & Mrs. Howard that he spent that afternoon from 5 till ½ past 9 when he was sent for by Genl. Burton (he being town Major, upon the uproar that this affair had occasioned) at the house of Dr. Robertson—it was a particular festival with the French of whom the company was mostly composed, that he danced ’till supper time with Madam Landrief in the midst of which Genl. Burton’s servant came & called him out—they spoke all very positively to his being present the whole time & the impossibility that he could be absent for 5 minutes without their knowing it.

“Upon this evidence the Jury went out of Court and in about an hour returned with their Verdict Not Guilty—In justice to them and to Major Disney I must declare that I am perfectly satisfied with the Verdict.

“Mr. Walker’s violence of temper and an inclination to find People of rank in the Army concerned in this affair, has made him a Dupe to the artifices of a Villian whose story could not have gained credit but in a mind that came too much prejudiced to receive it, the unhappy consequence of it I fear will be that by mistaking the real objects of his Resentments the public will be disappointed in the satisfaction of seeing them brought to justice.

“I should inform Your Lordship that the G. Jury inflamed with Mr. Walker’s charge against them are preparing to bring in several actions for words and have presented both him and Mrs. Walker for Perjury—I have endeavoured to put a stop to both and I hope I shall succeed.

“I have the honour to be

“My Lord

“Yr. Lordship’s most obedt & humble servant,

“W. Hey.”

The report of the trial was printed by Brown and Gilmour at Quebec, it being the second book that appeared in Canada. The first book published is generally believed to be “Catechisme du Diocese de Sens Imprimé a Quebec chez, (Brown and Gilmour).” Brown and Gilmour were the printers of the first journal “The Quebec Gazette” published on June 21, 1764. It was printed with columns of English and French and was issued weekly.

Walker was afterward removed on the consideration of the Council from the commission of the peace at Montreal because of his seditionary tendencies and of the frequent accusations of his insolent and overbearing temper which made it impossible for his brother magistrates to associate with him. General Murray reluctantly consented if for no other reasons than his enemies would otherwise see vindictiveness in his actions.

On the 27th of March, 1766, Walker, who had powerful friends in England, was ordered by His Majesty to be restored to the magistracy. On the same day an order from the privy council was issued by the governor of Michillimackinac and Detroit to give him effectual assistance in his business pursuits. At the same time stringent orders were given for the discovery of the perpetrators of the outrage on him. The government offered a reward of two hundred pounds, and of a free pardon and a discharge from the army to any person informing. Montreal inhabitants offered another three hundred pounds. But there was nothing done.

Between the actual outrage and the final acquittal of Captain Disney, Walker had been a thorn in the flesh to Murray. His dismissal from the bench made him no friend of the Governor and he boasted afterwards that he had influenced Murray’s recall.

The first news of this likely recall came in 1765; on February 3d Murray wrote lamenting that Mr. Walker should have known it before himself.

Murray’s position was an unenviable one; his sympathy with the French Canadians was the basis of the anger of the little knot of powerful merchants against him; he was made the scape-goat for the difficulties arising from the bad working of the unfavorable new civil government. In addition he had troubles with the commandants of Montreal and Three Rivers who as military commanders had much independent authority, over which Murray had no control, much to his chagrin. The constitutional documents of this period contain the petitions signed by twenty-one of the merchants for his recall, and that of the seigneurs for his maintenance. Their description of those allied against Murray runs thus: “A cabal of people who have come in the train of the army as well as clerks and agents for the London merchants.” Their testimony to Murray is his justification. “We were suited in the government of Mr. Murray. We knew his character, we were fully satisfied with his probity and his feelings of humanity; he was fitted to bring your new subjects to a regard for the yoke of your kindly domination by his care to make it light.”

On April 1, 1766, Conway, secretary of the colonies, wrote to Murray requesting his immediate return. He left Quebec on June 28th, leaving the government in the hands of the senior councillor, Lieut.-Col. Aemilius Irving; on the same day there arrived the new bishop, M. Briand to fill the vacancy left by Pontbriand, who died in Montreal before the capitulation.

The result of the Walker outbreak was that Murray’s frequent representations that barracks should be built were listened to and in 1765 they were erected, but hardly so, when in February, 1766, they were burned down with all the stores placed there. A public meeting was called to appeal for shelter for the soldiers, who were again billeted upon the inhabitants, but with the promise that by May 1, houses should be hired for them. On his return to London Murray in his report to Shelburne on August 20, 1766, had his revenge on the New England settlers whom he calls broadly the most immoral collection of men he had ever known, and says:

“Magistrates were made and juries composed from four hundred and fifty contemptible sutters and traders. The judge pitched upon to conciliate the minds of seventy-five thousand foreigners to the laws and government of Great Britain was taken from a jail, entirely ignorant of law and of the language of the people.

“* * * On the other hand the Canadians, accustomed to an arbitrary and a sort of military government, are a frugal, industrious and moral race of men who from the just and mild treatment they met with from His Majesty’s military officers that ruled the country for four years past until the establishment of the civil government had greatly got the better of the natural antipathy they had of their conquerers. They consist of the noblesse who are numerous and who pride themselves much upon the antiquity of their families, their own military glory and that of their ancestors. These noblesse are Seigneurs of the whole country and though not rich are in a situation, in that plentiful part of the world where money is scarce and luxury still unknown, to support their dignity. The inhabitants, their tenanciers, who pay only annual quit rent of about a dollar for one hundred acres, are at their ease and comfortable. They have been accustomed to respect and obey the noblesse; their tenure being military they have shared with them the dangers of the field and natural affection has been increased in proportion to the calamities which have been common to both in the country. So they have been taught to respect their Seigneurs and not get intoxicated with the abuse of liberty; they are shocked at the insults which their noblesse and the king’s officers have received from the English traders and lawyers since the civil government took place.”

He adds: “The Canadian noblesse were hated because their birth and behaviour entitled them to respect and the peasants were abhorred because they were saved from the oppression they were threatend with.”

The letter concludes: “I glory in having been accused of war with unfairness in protecting the king’s Canadian subjects and of doing the utmost in my power to gain to my royal master the affections of that great, hardy people whose emigration, if ever it should happen, will be an irreparable loss to this country.”

Though Murray was recalled it must not be assumed that his policy of colonial government was disapproved of by the ministers for it was not until April, 1768, that he relinquished the office of governor in chief. After a time the opposition between the military and the magistrates died down, but the latter now became a fertile source of oppression to the civil population.

Let us then turn our attention to the Montreal justices of the peace. In 1769, reports had reached the Council at Quebec as to the oppresive practices of some of the magistrates of the Montreal district, and in consequence the council addressed to many of them on July 10, 1769, a letter of remonstrance applicable to “those magistrates only who had given occasion for the complaint.”

The circular prepared by a committee of the Council was addressed “To the Justices of the Peace active in and for the district of Montreal.” It opened with a charge that “it appears from facts too notorious to be dispelled that His Majesty’s subjects in general, but more particularly his Canadian subjects, are daily injured and abused to a degree they are no longer able to support nor public justice endure.” The chief charges were of extorting excessive fees from litigants applying freely to the court and that in addition a low class of bailiffs, many of them French Canadians, who provoked and instituted lawsuits among the inhabitants were going about with blank forms signed with the justices’ names ready to be filled up at any moment. Thus abuses were numerous.

In August a committee of the Council sat to consider further the state of the administration of Justice under the justices of peace. A report was prepared and was read on August 29th and September 11th. It was agreed to in the Castle of St. Louis by the council on September 14th, and Acting Attorney General Kneller was instructed to prepare an ordinance on the point.

The report after stating that although the original powers in matters of property given to justices of the peace by the ordinance of September 14, 1764, were exceedingly grievous and oppressive to the subjects, yet even so “the authority given to the Justices hath been both too largely and too confidently entrusted and requires to be retrenched if not wholly taken away.” It then notices “The Justices of Montreal have in one instance, and probably in many others which have passed without notice, assumed to themselves powers of a nature not fit to be exercised by any Summary Jurisdiction, whatsoever, in consequence of which Titles to Land have been determined and possessions disturbed in a way unknown to the laws of England and inconsistent with the solemnity and deliberation which is due to matters of so high and important a nature. And we are not without information, that even where personal property only has been in dispute, one magistrate in particular under pretense that it was at the desire and request of both the contending parties has by himself exercised a jurisdiction considerably beyond what the ordinance has allowed even to three Justices in full court at their Quarter Sessions.

“From an omission of a similar nature and for want of ascertaining the manner in which their judgments were to be inforced, we find the Magistrates to have assumed another very high and dangerous Authority in the exercise of which Gaols are constantly filled with numbers of unhappy objects and whole families reduced to beggery and ruin.”

Later the report refers to evils “which will probably always be the case when the office of a Justice of Peace is considered as a lucrative one and must infallibly be so when it is his principal, if not, only dependence.”

One consequence of the report was the appointment in the ordinance of a Court of Common Pleas to be held before judges constantly residing in the town of Montreal. This court was now to be independent of, and with the same powers as, that at Quebec. Hitherto the latter had held adjourned meetings on different days at Montreal. The object was to give inexpensive, speedy and expert hearing to Montrealers.

The ordinance passed in the council on February 3, 1770, was translated and soon appears in English and French in the “Gazette.” When it appeared in Montreal it roused strong indignation among the magistrates whose powers were now curtailed. A memorial signed by fifty signatures only was presented on the part of “merchants and others of the city of Montreal” with twenty objections to the Ordinance. Pierre du Calvet, a French Huguenot magistrate, was one of the indignant protestors and his usual high-flown style characterizes his memorial. According to Sir Guy Carleton’s statement to the deputation they had issued handbills calling a meeting of the people to discuss grievances, they had importuned and even insulted several French Canadians because they would not join them. Carleton who had now succeeded Murray in the Government of Canada warned them that they were acting against their own interests, that the firm refusal of the Canadians as well as of most of their countrymen plainly showed the opinion the generality of the public entertained. In his letter to Lord Hillsborough of the 25th of April, 1770, Carleton, however, after pointing out the evils caused by the law as administered by the justices says: “Though I have great reason to be dissatisfied with the conduct of some of the justices there are worthy men in the commission of the peace in both districts and particularly in this of Quebec.” (See Brymner’s Canadian Archives Report, 1890, whose abstract is here used.)

To the credit of the better class of Montreal merchants of this period we must clearly dissociate the names of men who like James McGill and others have deserved the city’s most grateful remembrance, from the inferior “grafters,” to use a modern term, then exploiting the people. These were disapproved of by many of their own race. Carleton’s report of them to Lord Hillsborough dated Quebec, 28th of March, 1770, clearly designates the “rascals” of the day. “Your Lordship has already been informed that the Protestants who have settled, or rather sojourned here since the conquest, are composed only of Traders, disbanded soldiers and officers, the latter, one or two excepted, below the Rank of Captains, of those in the Commission of the Peace such as prospered in business could not give up their time to sit as Judges, and when several from accidents and ill-judged undertakings became Bankrupts they naturally sought to repair their broken fortunes at the expense of the people; hence a variety of schemes to increase their business and their own emoluments. Bailiffs of their own creation, mostly French soldiers either disbanded or Deserters, dispersed through the parishes with blank citations, catching at every little feud or dissension among the people, exciting them on to their Ruin and in a manner forcing them to litigate what, if left to themselves, might have been easily accommodated, putting them to extravagant Costs for the Recovery of very small sums; their Lands, at a time there is the greatest scarcity of money and consequently but few Purchasers, exposed to hasty sales for the Payment of the most trifling debts, and the money arising from these sales consumed in exorbitant Fees, while the Creditors reaped little benefit from the Destruction of their unfortunate Debtors. This, My Lords, is but a very faint sketch of the Distresses of the Canadians and the cause of much Reproach to our National Justice and the King’s Government.” (Report Canadian Archives for 1890.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] For their action in this case Carleton removed their names from the council.

[2] List of the grand jury of the district of Montreal before which bills were laid against the prisoners charged with the assault on Thomas Walker:

1. Samuel McKay, Esq. (Foreman).
2. M. St. Ours (K. of St. Louis).
3. Isaac Todd.
4. Francis de Bellestre (K. of St. Louis).
5. Louis Mattorell.
6. Mons. Contrecoeur (K. of St. L.).
7. Mons. Niverville (K. of St. L.).
8. Thomas Lynch.
9. Mons. La Bruiere.
10. John Livingston.
11. Jacob Jordan.
12. Mons. Niverville de Trois Rivières.
13. Mons. Normanville.
14. Moses Hazen.
15. Dailbout de Cuisy.
16. Jas. Porteous.
17. Jno. Dumas.
18. Wm. Grant.
19. Samuel Mather.
20. Augustus Bailie.
21. John Jennison.

In a P.S. from Sir Guy Carleton to Lord Shelburne it is stated: “The attorney general at the desire of Mr. Walker objected to the Knights of St. Lewis being of the grand jury as not having taken the oath of allegiance, which objection they immediately removed by cheerfully taking them.”

CHAPTER V

THE PRELIMINARY STRUGGLE FOR AN ASSEMBLY

THE BRITISH MERCHANTS OF MONTREAL

“VERY RESPECTABLE MERCHANTS”—A LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY ON BRITISH LINES PROMOTED BY THEM—INOPPORTUNE—VARIOUS MEMORIALS TO GOVERNMENT—THE MEETINGS AT MILES PRENTIES’ HOUSE—CRAMAHE—MASERES—COUNTER PETITIONS.

Trade passed over almost bodily to the English. The records of the Chambre de Milice de Montreal at present at Quebec reveal even in the civil disputes during the Interregnum of 1760-63 a boom in trade in Montreal such as those of the past never portrayed.

The early traders have been whipped unmercifully by Murray and Carleton but there were certainly some who were recognized as “very respectable merchants.” The British merchants were first at Quebec at its fall, and soon they also followed to Montreal at the Capitulation. Many were weeded out by failure and the climate, but the residue that remained of the class of the canny mercantile adventurers who always adorn the hour of advancing civilization, with the addition of more solid representatives of the large English houses, was the foundation of the enterprising merchant class of Quebec and Montreal, but especially of the latter centre, which quickly seized the control of the wholesale business, particularly the fur trade, the traffic with the Indians and the foreign commerce. Despite the narrowness of their vision and the jealous grasping after power due to them, they considered, as the conquering body, this small group of men by their superior activity, wealth and political skill came to wield great influence in the city and on the country on the whole well and wisely.

Hitherto, we have had to point out some of the weaknesses of those of the less honourable and unsuccessful merchant class, even of those who became magistrates. It remains now to chronicle the action of a well meaning body of the substantial business men at Montreal toward consolidating the constitutional system of the country and developing it along British colonial lines. Their political foresight was ahead of their time. Yet from the earliest days of British rule the English merchants of Montreal, together with those of Quebec, certainly kept before themselves and the Home Government the need of a representative assembly as promised to them, such as they had been familiar with in other British colonies in America. Unfortunately the desire to have this manned by Protestants only was made too evident from the outset and alienated the sympathy of those of the French Canadians otherwise becoming well disposed. Their narrow inherited spirit of intolerance, their conception of British rights, for they came “bearing all the laws of England on their backs,” their belief in their own capabilities, their evident business success and the large capital they invested in Canada,[1] the strong conviction of the ultimate needs of such an institution, if ever the country was to be reduced to the same uniformity as the other colonies where British institutions flourished, blinded them to the inopportuneness of the hour for the establishment of such an assembly. They forgot, imbued as so many of them were with democratic and republican tendencies, that the New British Province was not an infant colony, but one which had been long in existence and impregnated with French feudalism.

Again the upper classes were against the assembly, and the lower not prepared by education[2] or desire, to take their share in popular government; much less were they inclined to be permitted to vote for a class who desired openly and not very discreetly to ignore the political existence of their race.

Still the merchants persisted. An opportunity was given by the departure of Carleton, who had asked leave of absence for a few months to place his views directly before the government, but it was not till 1774 that he returned. During that time his delayed presence in London was valuable for consultation in the preparation of the “Quebec Act.” Carleton left behind his first counsellor, a Swiss Protestant, Hector Theophile Cramahé, to act for him. Carleton departed early in August and on the 9th Cramahé issued a proclamation declaring that the command had temporarily devolved upon him. In 1771, on July 21st, Cramahé was appointed Lieutenant Governor. Shortly after Carleton’s departure Cramahé sent two petitions to him to be presented to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.

The first was that of the Quebec and Montreal British free-holders, merchants and traders on behalf of themselves and others. His Majesty is reminded of his direction to governors in his Royal proclamation of the 7th of October in the third year of his reign, that general assemblies should be called as soon as the state and circumstances thereof would admit, in such manner as is used in the provinces of America under His Majesty’s immediate government. The arguments adduced are, that such an assembly would strengthen the hands of government, give encouragement and protection to agriculture and commerce, increase the public revenue and in time would be a happy means of uniting the new subjects in a due conformity to the British laws and customs.

The memorialists represented: “That Your Majesty’s British subjects residing in this province have set examples and given every encouragement in their power to promote industry, are the principal importers of British manufactures, carry on three-fourths of the trade of this country, annually return a considerable revenue into Your Majesty’s exchequer in Great Britain; and though the great advantages this country is naturally capable of, are many and obvious, for promoting the trade and manufactures of the mother country, yet for some time past both the landed and commercial interests have been declining and if a General Assembly is not soon ordered by Your Majesty to make and enforce due obedience to laws for encouraging agriculture, regulating the trade, discouraging such importations from the other colonies as impoverish the Province, your petitioners have the greatest reason to apprehend their own ruin as well as that of the province in general.

“That there is now a sufficient number of Your Majesty’s subjects residing in and possessed of real property in this province and who are otherwise qualified to be members of a General Assembly.”

This petition is signed by thirty-one of the principal merchants. It will be noticed that there are only two of these names that appeared on the petition of 1765 for the assembly and the recall of Murray. The whole document is more dignified. The memorialists are men of great weight. Their claim as the developers of commerce is undoubted. The only weakness lay in the concluding clause which is merely the outcome of the traditional intolerance then in vogue but which was to be the chief cause of the delay of their efforts till the act of 1791 at last crowned their efforts. Among the Montreal signatures in the above memorial are those of Alexander Henry, John Porteous, James McGill, Alexander Paterson, Richard Dobie, J. Fraser and Isaac Todd.

The above memorial was set off by that of fifty-nine “Canadian” leaders who appealed for the restoration of their customs and usages according to the laws, customs and regulations under which they were born and which served as the basis and foundations of their possessions. They also ask not to be excluded from offices in the service of the king. The petition is to be presented by Sir Guy Carleton. “It is to this worthy representative of Your Majesty who perfectly comprehends the ambitions of this colony and the customs of this people that we confide our most humble supplications to be conveyed to the foot of your throne.”

The year 1773 saw great activity in the duel; the case of the old and new subjects was being argued in London. The most eminent statesmen and lawyers, state officials, were studying the numerous documents in view of the proposed Quebec act of settlement. The merchants of Montreal and Quebec determined to make a great effort. In the winter of 1772 Thomas Walker, of Montreal, and Zachary Macaulay, of Quebec, had already conferred in London with Masères about the prospect of an Assembly. Mazères, though now a cursitor baron of the exchequer, still kept his interest in Canadian affairs as when attorney general at Quebec. There is no name more prominent among those who contributed to the elucidation of the difficulties of this time than this able man. His Huguenot upbringing, however, somewhat warped his otherwise calm judgment in surveying the French Canadian position, yet his was a warning of the opportunist. “I told them,” wrote Masères to Dartmouth on January 4, 1774, “that I thought a legislative council, consisting of only Protestants and much more numerous than the present, and made perfectly independent of the Governor so as to be neither removable nor suspendible by him on any pretense but only removable by the King in council, would be a better instrument for that province than an assembly for seven or eight years to come, and until the Protestant religion and English manners, laws and affections shall have made a little more progress there and especially an assembly unto which any Catholics shall be admitted.”

The two representatives, however, seemed to have been resolved to push for an Assembly for they were both found to be on the committee organized for that purpose on October 30, 1773, in Quebec at Miles Prenties’ Inn. The meeting was called by John McCord. The circumstances are related by Cramahé’s letter to Dartmouth of December 13th when he inclosed the final petitions sent to him by the merchants. “About six weeks or two months ago a Mr. McCord from the north of Ireland, who settled here soon after the conquest, where he picked up a very comfortable livelihood by the retailing business in which he is a considerable dealer, the article of spiritous liquors especially, summoned the principal inhabitants of this town that are Protestants to meet at a tavern where he proposed to them, applying for a house of assembly.”

The transactions, of the meeting called by McCord and of the subsequent ones, were recorded and sent to Masères by Quebec and Montreal citizens. He was thought to be the right person to approach as their agent, to have their case ventilated in London. They wrote to him on November 8, 1773, “The British inhabitants of whom we are appointed a committee are of very moderate principles. They wish for an assembly as they know that to be the only sure means of conciliating the new subjects, etc.” How the assembly is to be composed is a matter of the most serious consideration; “They would submit that to the wisdom of His Majesty’s council.”

They had evidently become less exacting in their demands that it should be reserved for Protestants. What they really wanted was the Assembly.

The meeting at Miles Prenties’ in the Upper Town held on October 30th resulted in a committee of eleven being formed to draw up a petition for an assembly. The following were the eleven: William Grant, John Wells, Charles Grant, Anthony Vialars, Peter Fargues, Jenkin Williams, John Lees, Zachary Macaulay, Thomas Walker (of Montreal), Malcolm Fraser (secretary), John McCord (chairman). It was resolved that a copy of the minutes be sent to the gentlemen of Montreal. At the second meeting at Prenties’, November 2d (Tuesday), it was resolved to translate the petition into French and that the principal French inhabitants be invited to meet them at Prenties’ on Thursday, November 4th. It was further resolved to send a copy of the minutes and a draft of the petition by next post to Montreal addressed to Mr. Gray, to be communicated to the inhabitants of Montreal. On Thursday, November 4th, of the fifteen invitations sent out only eight French gentlemen appeared. The translation of the petition was read, and the clause on the composition of the assembly according to His Majesty’s wisdom, doubtless noted. After discussion M. Decheneaux and M. Perras undertook to convene a meeting of their fellow French citizens at 2 o’clock on Saturday next, to interest them in furthering the petition.

On Monday, November 8th, the English committee met at Prenties’. Being anxious to know what measures had been taken by the French on Saturday, Malcolm Fraser sent a note by a bearer to M. Perras, M. Decheneaux being out of town. A brief reply was sent back dated Quebec, 8-10th November, saying that the hasty departure of the vessels for Europe had not permitted him to reply according to his desire; “However I have seen some of my fellow citizens who do not appear to me to be disposed to assemble as some of us could wish. ‘Le grand nombre l’emporte et le petit reduit a prendre patience.’”

The next meeting of the committee was to be called at the discretion of the secretary as “the business will depend on the letters to be received from Montreal.”

Cramahé, explaining to Dartmouth, who had succeeded Hillsborough as Colonial Secretary, the want of cooperation by the French, says: “The Canadians, suspecting their only view was to push them forward to ask, without really intending their participation of the privilege, declined joining them here or at Montreal.” Had the petition asked for the abolition of the religious test and the inclusion of Catholics in the assembly the Canadians would have doubtless cooperated. The petition was presented on December 4, 1773; the Quebec (fifty-two) and Montreal (thirty-nine) signatures are both dated November 29th. It was presented to Cramahé as the Lieutenant Governor and he was prayed in accordance with the powers given the Governor by the Royal proclamation of 1763: “To summon and call a general assembly of the freeholders and planters within your government in such a manner as you in your jurisdiction shall judge most proper.” As the words stand it may be argued that the merchants were ready to forego their Protestantism in favour of a mixed assembly, but evidently the acting Governor had his doubts. Cramahé therefore answered cautiously, as was expected, “That the petition was altogether of too much importance for His Majesty’s Council here to advise at a time when the affairs of the province were likely to become an object of public regulation. The petition and his answer would be transmitted to His Majesty’s Secretary of State.”

The second petition already arranged for, and containing the answer of Cramahé, was prepared and sent to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, praying him “to direct Your Majesty’s Governor or Commander in Chief to call a general assembly in such manner and of such constitution and form as to Your Majesty, in your Royal wisdom, shall seem best adapted to secure its peace, welfare and good government.” Besides the copy sent through Cramahé to Dartmouth, the committee sent another to Masères to enable him to present their case and to communicate its purport to their mercantile associates in London. The signatures of the Quebec subscribers, dated December 31, 1773, numbered sixty-one, those of Montreal dated January 10, 1774, reached eighty-one.

Cramahé’s comment on these signatures in his letter to Dartmouth reads: “It may not be amiss to observe that there are not above five among the signers to the two petitions who can be properly styled freeholders and the value of four of these freeholds is very inconsiderable. The number of those possessing houses in the towns of Quebec and Montreal, or farms in the country held of the king for some private seigneur upon paying a yearly acknowledgment, is under thirty.”

As an offset, the memorial to the petition sent by the seigneurs and principal Catholics about February, 1774, and made in opposition to an assembly, urges the granting of their request “because we possess more than ten out of twelve of all the seigneuries of the province and almost all the lands of the other tenures or which are holden by rent service.”

In addition to the petition to the king signed by the “ancient and loyal subjects” of Quebec and Montreal, two memorials to Lord Dartmouth were separately sent by the promoting committees at either place. These seemed to have been presented through Masères since they are not indorsed, as were the petitions to the king, as received through Cramahé.

The Montreal memorial urging the furtherance of their petition is dated Montreal, January 15, 1774, and signed by a committee appointed at a general meeting of the inhabitants of Edw. W. Gray, R. Huntley, Lawrence Ermatinger, Will Haywood, James McGill, James Finlay, Edward Chinn.

The memorial included a new element, viz., “Your Lordship’s memorialists further see with regret the great danger that children born of Protestant parents are in of being utterly neglected for want of a sufficient number of Protestant pastors and thereby exposed to the usual and known assiduity of the Roman Catholic clergy of different orders who are very numerous and who for their own friends have lately established a Seminary for the education of youths in this province, which is the more alarming as it excludes all Protestant teachers of any science whatever.” The name of James McGill, the founder afterwards of McGill University, is significant, therefore, on this petition.

The counter petition and the memorial accompanying it, signed by sixty-five of the noblesse, followed in February, 1774. Thus the duel went on. We delay recounting its outcome till the case for the Seigneurs is more fully disclosed in the next chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Witness the appeal for Murray’s recall. Thomas Walker is said to have brought ten thousand pounds into the province.

[2] M. Lothbiniere, the representative of the noblesse in London said that he doubted whether more than four or five persons in a parish could read.

CHAPTER VI

THE QUEBEC ACT OF 1774

THE NOBLESSE OF THE DISTRICT OF MONTREAL

THE GRIEVANCES OF THE SEIGNEURS—MONTREAL THE HEADQUARTERS—“EVERY INTRIGUE TO OUR DISADVANTAGE WILL BE HATCHED THERE”—PETITIONS—CARLETON’S FEAR OF A FRENCH INVASION—A SECRET MEETING—PROTESTS OF MAGISTRATES TODD AND BRASHAY—PROTESTS OF CITIZENS—CARLETON’S CORRESPONDENCE FOR AN AMENDED CONSTITUTION IN FAVOUR OF THE NOBLESSE—THE QUEBEC ACT—ANGLICIZATION ABANDONED.

The Noblesse of the district of Montreal are now to play a great part in the making of the constitutional history of Canada. They had appreciated the government of Murray and had petitioned for his continuance but in vain. At the same time while thanking the king for the appointment of the Bishop Briand which was a great concession, they asked for two favours: first, the suppression of the Land Register, the expense of which exhausted the colony without its drawing any profit therefrom; second, that all the subjects of this province without any distinction of religion should be admitted to all offices without any other qualifications but those of talent and personal merit; for to be excluded by the state from having any participation in it is not to be a member of the state. This petition was signed by Chevalier D’Ailleboust and thirty-nine other seigneurs and was endorsed as received on February 3, 1767.

The grievance of the seigneurs in the latter request was briefly this: that though the French Canadians were not obliged by the Royal Instructions of 1763 to take the oath of the test of allegiance, supremacy and religious abjuration, yet these oaths were obligatory on all who would hold an appointment under government such as members of the proposed assembly, civil and military officials, etc. Hence the constant effort of the noblesse to remove this odious civil disability continued until in 1774 the act of Quebec made it disappear and saw a formula substituted which was acceptable to all honest and conscientious “new subjects.” The following oath, afterwards taken almost textually by Bishop Briand, in the light of today will be seen to be quite adequate:

“Je, A.B. promets et jure sincèrement que Je serai fidèle et porterai vraie allégeance à Sa Majesté le roi George, que Je le défendrai de tout mon pouvoir contre toutes conspirations perfides et tous attentats quelconques, dirigés contre sa personne, sa couronne et sa dignité; et que Je ferai tous mes efforts pour découvrir et faire connaitre à Sa Majesté, ses heretiers et successeurs, toutes trahisons et conspirations perfides et tous attentats que Je saurai dirigés contre lui ou chacun d’eux; et tout cela, Je le jure sans aucune équivoque subterfuge mental ou restriction secrète, renoncant pour m’en relever, à tous pardons et dispenses de personne ou pouvoir quelconques.

“Ainsi que Dieu me soit en aide,”

The same form taken from the English was as follows:

“I, A.B., do sincerely promise and swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty, King George, and that I will defend him to the utmost of my power against all traitorous conspiracies and attempts whatever, which shall be made against His Person, Crown and Dignity, and that I will do my utmost endeavor to disclose and make known to His Majesty, His Heirs or Successors, all treasons and traitorous conspiracies and attempts which I shall know to be against him or any of them; And all this I do swear without any equivocation, mental evasion or secret reservation and renouncing all pardons and dispensations from any Person or Power whichever to the Contrary.

“So help me God.”

After the recall of Murray the seigneurs and clergy had looked forward to the arrival of the new lieutenant governor, Sir Guy Carleton, who reached Quebec on September 23, 1766, to relieve Col. Aemiluis Irving, who had acted for nearly three months as administrator on the departure of General Murray. He did not become governor-in-chief until October 25, 1769, Murray yielding up the government about April, 1768.

It may be noted that Carleton’s first message to the Council is one which promulgated the doctrine Salvation through Harmony or, Safety in Concord, which under the form of “Concordia Salus” is that now recognized as the official motto of the City of Montreal:

“Gentlemen of the Council:

“I return you Thanks for your kind and dutiful Address and for the Respect shown to His Majesty’s Commission; I doubt not but I shall always find your hearty Concurrence to Everything I shall propose for the Good of His Service.

“My present Demand is that all may join to preserve good Humour and a perfect Harmony, first among His Majesty’s natural born Subjects, also between His Subjects by Birth and His Subjects by Acquisition, so that no Distinction may be noted but the great Difference between good men and bad. As the Good and Happiness of His People is the first Object with the King, our Sovereign, we must all know, nothing would be more acceptable to them; We must all Feel nothing can be more agreeable to the great Laws of Humanity.

“Quebec, 24th Sept., 1766.”

The new Governor soon found that in proportion to the arrogance of the English-speaking minority demanding an assembly in which they would be the sole representatives, the noblesse were becoming increasingly restless, for while accepting the English criminal law they demanded their French civil code and customs unmodified. Carleton was inclined to accept this view, but Masères, the attorney-general, who had presented lengthy reports on the situation and had pointed out his own remedies, argued that the English law should be the basis of jurisdiction with the admission of certain sections of Canadian law and customs which would have been acceptable to the English inhabitants, also. He recommended the immediate preparation of a code reviving the French law relating to tenure, dower and inheritance of landed property, and the distribution of the effects of persons who died intestate.

What may have influenced Carleton in his willingness to concede so much to the demand of the seigneurs was the fear of the movement spreading in Canada among the seigneurs to cast off British rule. His attention was drawn to Montreal as the center of the secret negotiations and dissatisfaction. General Murray in his letter of October 29, 1764, had already pointed out to the Lords of Trade and Plantation the difficulties likely to be created there if the Canadians were not accepted on juries. “I beg leave,” he says, “further to represent to Your Lordship that a lieutenant-governor at Montreal is absolutely necessary; that town is in the heart of the most populous part of the province. It is surrounded by the Indian nations and is 180 miles from the capital. It is there that the most opulent priests live and there are settled the greatest part of the French noblesse, consequently every intrigue to our disadvantage will be hatched there.” (“Canadian Archives,” Vol. II, page 233.)

One of the causes of General Murray’s allusions to plots at Montreal at this time may have been the presence of Ensign William Forsyth who had commanded an independent patrol of Scotch settlers in New Hampshire during the Indian war along the border, shortly after the session of Canada in 1763. He had been wounded and escaped to Montreal. He was related to several of the Canadian noblesse, particularly that of the Denys family. It is suggested that on the occasion of this visit there may have been planted the germs of an alliance between the French noblesse and the Scotch legitimists in favour of a Stuart dynasty which afterwards ripened into a more complete understanding.

On January 7, 1763, a petition signed by ninety-five of the chief inhabitants, including Montrealers such as Guy, and Jacques Hervieux, was presented to the king, protesting against the attitude of the British minority in excluding them from the law courts and asking for a confirmation of the privileges contained in Murray’s act for French Canadians. “Who are they that wish to proscribe us? About thirty English merchants of whom fifteen at the most are settled. Who are the proscribed? Ten thousand heads of families who breathe only submission to Your Majesty’s orders.”

Can it be wondered that at Montreal, the headquarters of the seigneurs, there is much dissatisfaction? The seigneurs at this time in petitioning the king for the maintenance of General Murray complained: “Our hopes have been destroyed by the establishment of the civil government that had been so highly extolled; we saw rise with it cabal, trial and confusion.” This may be taken as their prevailing attitude of mind.

On the 25th of November, 1767, Carleton wrote a remarkable letter in which, forecasting the possibility of a French war surprising the province, he recommends “The building of a citadel within the town of Quebec that the troops might have a fort capable of being defended by their numbers till succour could be sent them from home or from the neighbouring colonies; for should a French war surprise the province in its present condition the Canadian officers sent from France with troops might assemble such a body of people as will render the king’s dominion over the province very precarious while it depends on a few troops in an extensive fort open in many places.” (“Archives,” Series Q, Vol. V, page 250.)

Again Carleton, in the same letter to Shelburne, feared the possibility of former French officers, especially those who left after the capitulation, being sent back to Canada to lead an uprising. He knew these had been encouraged to return to France and were being upkept as a separate body with pay. “For these reasons,” he says, “I imagine, an edict was published in 1672, declaring that, notwithstanding the low state of the king’s finances, the salary of the captains of the colony troops of Canada should be raised from 450 livres, the establishment by which their pay was fixed at first, to 600 livres a year, to be paid quarterly, upon the footing of officers in full pay, by the treasurer of the colonies, at the quarters assigned them by His Majesty in Tourraine, and that such of them as did not repair thither should be struck off, the king’s intentions being that the said officers should remain in that province until further orders, and not depart from thence without a written leave from the secretary of state for the marine department.

“A few of these officers had been sent to the other colonies, but the greater part still remained in Tourraine, and the arrears due to those who have remained any time in this country are punctually discharged, upon their emigration, from them and obedience to the above mentioned injunction.

“By the secretary of state’s letter a certain quantity of wine, duty free, is admitted to enter the towns where these Canadian officers quarter, for their use according to their several ranks.”

In a further letter to Shelburne of December, 1767, he again clearly recognized the difficult political situation. “The most advisable method in my opinion for removing the present as well as for preventing future evils is to repeal that ordinance (of September 17, 1764) as null and void in its own nature and for the present leave the Canadian laws almost entire; such alterations might be afterwards made in them as time and occurrences rendered the same advisable so as to reduce them to that system His Majesty shall think fit, without risking the dangers of too much precipitation; or else such alterations might be made in the old and new laws judged necessary to be inevitably introduced and publish the whole as a Canadian code as was practiced by Edward I after the conquest of Wales.”

Meanwhile the seigneurs were not idle. In 1767 there was an assembly at Montreal of the noblesse presided over by the Chevalier D’Ailleboust and the petition was signed of remonstrance to the king, dated February 3d, already quoted, against discrimination against them.

This leads us to ask the question: Did the seigneurial body meet in open or secret conclave when their interests were to be safeguarded? Both kinds of conclaves would seem likely. It is certain, however, that such meetings were as far as possible prevented. Garneau “Histoire du Canada,” 4th edit., (Vol. II, page 400) relates that in 1766 Hertel de Rouville in the name of the seigneurs of Montreal applied for permission for the seigneurs to meet, which was granted on condition that two of the Supreme Council should be present with power to dissolve the gathering. When the seigneurs assembled General Burton, who had not been warned, wrote to the magistrates who replied that all was in order. “In any case,” replied the suspicious general, “if you have any need of assistance I will send it you.” The meeting was called by Hertel de Rouville “by a particular order of the Governor and Council” who doubtless thought by conciliating the seigneurs, so far the responsible representatives of the people, that peaceful relations could be maintained with the new subjects.

A document recently unearthed by Mr. Massicotte, at the Court House archives, reveals that on the 3d of March, 1766, the Montreal merchants met in the house of James Crofton, inn-keeper “to protect against the meeting of the seigneurs held in the public court house on Friday, February 21st, 1766.” Their declaration before Edward William Gray, “Notary and Tabellion Publick,”[1] protested that the seigneurs had been unconstitutionally chosen at the different parish meetings to represent the inhabitants of the seignories as agents “without the knowledge or consent of the magistrates of the districts, the commander-in-chief of His Majesty’s forces or the inhabitants of the city;” that these separate meetings not only for the entire exclusion of His Majesty’s ancient British subjects in general but of the mercantile part of His Majesty’s new subjects, did not make for unity or content. They further protested that “several of His Majesty’s British subjects who are possessed of seignories never received an order or summons to this said meeting.” The declaration further states that upon the principal English and French citizens assembling at the courthouse in order to be present at and know the cause of the public meeting they were informed by Adam Mabane, Esq., one of His Majesty’s council for the province that their presence was not necessary, as the meeting did not regard them and ordered them out. There were two of His Majesty’s justices of the peace present, Isaac Todd and Thomas Brashay, who “the public, thinking they had been given sanction to it, expressed them in such a manner that they sent down their resignation to the governor.” The malcontents withdrew under the impression that representatives for the people were being chosen without their consent. They flattered themselves, however, that when the house of assembly promised in His Majesty’s proclamation should come “His Majesty’s ancient subjects will be permitted at least to have a share in the choice of their representatives.”

The document written in English and French is signed in the former by John Wells, R. Stenhouse, Mathew Lessey, Samuel Holmes, John Stenhouse, G. Young, Joseph Howard, Lawrence Ermatinger, Mathew Wade, James Price, Thomas Barron, Jonas Desaulles, Richard Dobie, William Haywood, John Blake, and in the French by Jean Orilliat, Le Cavelier Pappalon, Le Prohon Dissan, Guy, Am. Hubert, St. Germain, Gagnée, Hervieux, Jacques Hervieux, Lg Bourassa, C. Depré, P. Le Duc, Pillet, Augé, Chenville. The witnesses to both documents are B. Frobisher, John Thomson.[2] The names of the seigneurs given as present at the meeting are, (1) Claude Pierre Pecaudy de Contrecoeur, (2) Roch St. Ours Deschaillons, (3) Jacques Michel Hertel de Rouville, (4) Joseph, Michel Legardeur Sr. de Croiselle-Montesson, (5) Joseph Boucher de Niverville, (6) Joseph Godfrey de Normanville, (7) Louis François Pierre Paul Margane de Lavaltrie, (8) Hyacinthe Godfrey de Lintot, (9) Pierre Louis Boucher de Niverville, (10) Louis Gordian or Louis Charles, D’Ailleboust, (11) René Ovide Hertel de Rouville, (12.) Louis Joseph Godefroy de Tonnancourt, (13) Jean François Nepveu, Seigneur d’Autray, (14) Jacques Hyacinthe Simon dit Delorme, Seigneur Delorme (or St. Hyacinthe), (15) Jean Baptiste Normand, Seigneur de Repentigny, (16) Charles Etienne Crevier, Seigneur de St. François, (17) Joseph de Fleury, Sr. d’Archambault, (18) René Boudier de la Breyère, (19) Abbé Etienne Montgolfier (Superior of the Seminary and Seigneur of the Isle of Montreal).

Carleton writing to Earl of Shelburne, one of His Majesty’s principal secretaries (given in Q 5, page 260, “Canadian Archives”), may again be quoted as indicating the grounds on which his toleration of such meetings as the one above recorded.[3]

“Quebec, 25th November, 1767.

“The king’s forces in this province, supposing them compliant to their allowance and all in perfect health, rank and file, would amount to 1,627 men. The king’s old subjects in this province, supposing them all willing, might furnish about five hundred men able to bear arms, exclusive of his troops; that is, supposing all the king’s troops and old subjects collected in Quebec; with two months’ hard labor they might put the works in a tolerable state of repair and would amount to about one-third the forces necessary for its defense. The new subjects could send into the field about eighteen thousand men well able to carry arms; of which number above one-half had already served with as much valour, with more zeal and more military knowledge for America than the regular troops of France that were joined with them. As the common people are greatly to be influenced by their Seigneurs, I annex a Return[4] of the noblesse of Canada, showing with tolerable exactness their age; rank and present place of abode, together with such natives of France as served in the colony troops so early in life as to give them a knowledge of the country, an acquaintance and influence over the people equal to natives of the same rank; from whence it appears that there are in France and in the French service about one hundred officers, all ready to be sent back in case of a war to a country they are intimately acquainted with and with the assistance of some troops to stir up a people accustomed to pay them implicit obedience. It further shows there remain in Canada not more than seventy of those who ever had been in the French service; not one of them in the king’s service nor any one who from any motive whatever is induced to support his government and dominion; gentlemen who have lost their employment at least by becoming his subjects and as they are not bound by any offices of trust or profit we should only deceive ourselves by supposing they would be active in the defense of a people that has deprived them of their honours, privileges, profits and laws and in their stead have introduced much expence, chicannery and confusion with a deluge of new laws unknown and unpublished. Therefore, all circumstances considered, while matters continue in their present state, the most we can hope for from the gentlemen who remain in this province is a passive neutrality on all occasions, a respectful submission to government and deference for the king’s commission in whatever hand it may be lodged; this they almost to a man have persevered in since my arrival, notwithstanding much pains have been taken to engage them in parties by a few whose duty and whose office should have taught them better. * * *

“Having arrayed the strength of His Majesty’s old and new subjects and shewn the great superiority of the latter, it may not be amiss to observe there is not the least probability this present superiority should ever be diminished. On the contrary ’tis more than probable it will increase and strengthen daily. The Europeans who migrate never will prefer the long inhospitable winters of Canada to the more cheerful climates and more fruitful soil of His Majesty’s southern provinces; the few old subjects at present in this province have been mostly left here by accident and are either disbanded officers, soldiers or followers of the army, who not knowing how to dispose of themselves elsewhere, settled where they could at the Reduction; or else they are adventurers in trade or such as could not remain at home, who set out to mend their fortunes at the opening of this new channel for commerce, but experience has taught almost all of them that this trade requires a strict frugality they are strangers to, or to which they will not submit; so that some from more advantageous views elsewhere, others from necessity, have already left this province and I fear many more for the same reason will follow their example in a few years; but while this severe climate and the poverty of the country discourages all but the natives, its healthfulness is such that these multiply daily so that, barring a catastrophe shocking to think of, this country must to the end of time be peopled by a Canadian race who already have taken such a firm root and got to so great a height that any new stock transplanted will be totally hid and imperceptible amongst them except in the towns of Quebec and Montreal.”

This last consideration no doubt largely influenced Carleton in his readiness to uphold the ancient laws and customs. He had not the vision of an English-speaking Dominion such as that of today, of which the British merchants of Montreal and Quebec of the early days with all their faults were laying the sure foundation by their commercial enterprise and dogged pertinacity.

Writing again to Shelburne on December 24, 1767, Carleton reminds his Lordship that the colony had submitted to His Majesty’s arms on certain conditions. He doubtless had in view, good tory as he was, the objection of the noblesse to the institution of a democratic representative assembly already urged by the merchants of Quebec and Montreal with their experience of such in the English colonies, as inimical to the established order of things, for the system of laws so long in vogue before the act of 1763 maintained the subordination between the different social divisions from the highest to the most humble ranks and upheld the harmony now being threatened, thus keeping this far-off province in its loyalty to the crown.

On January 20, 1768, he again wrote recommending the inclusion, in the Council and the army, of a number of the noblesse. By this means he said: “We would at least succeed in dividing the Canadians and in case of war we would have a certain number on our side who would stimulate the zeal of the national troops of the king. Besides, the nobles would have reason to hope that their children without having received their education in France and without serving in the French service would be able to support their families in the service of the king, their master, in the exercise of offices which would prevent them from descending to the level of the common people through the division and the subdivision of their lands in each generation.” (Constitutional Documents, French Edit.)

On April 12, 1788, he again champions the noblesse and even recommends that the ceremony of seigneurial feudalism be kept up as under the ancient régime. “All lands here,” he says, “are dependent on His Majesty’s Château of St. Louis and I am persuaded that nothing can be more agreeable to the people and more suitable to secure the allegiance of the new subjects as well as the payment of fines, dues and rights which take the place of quit rents in this colony as a formal requisition, enjoining all who hold their lands directly from the king to render him foi et homage in his Château of St. Louis. The oaths taken by the vassals on this occasion are very solemn and binding and involve serious obligations; they are obliged in consequence to produce what they call here their ‘aveux et dénombrement,’ i. e., an exact return of their tenants and their revenue. In addition they have to pay their dues to their sovereign and to take arms to defend him in the case of an attack on the province.” (Constitutional Documents, French Edit.)

A letter of Carleton to Lord Hillsborough of November 20, 1768, is headed “Secret Correspondence” (“Archives,” Series Q, Vol. V, page 890).[5] It shows that others besides Murray and Carleton had been viewing with suspicion the actions of the noblesse who were thought to be meditating a revolt. “My Lord,” writes Carleton, “since my arrival in this province I have not been able to make any discovery that induces me to give credit to the paper of intelligence inclosed in Your Lordship’s letter of the 20th of May, last, nor do I think it probable the chiefs of their own free notion in time of peace dare assemble in numbers, consult and resolve on a revolt; that an assembly of military men should be so ignorant as to fancy they could defend themselves by a few fire ships only against any future attack from Great Britain after their experience in fifty-nine. Notwithstanding this and their decent and respectful obedience to the king’s government hitherto, I have not the least doubt of their secret attachment to France and think this will continue as long as they are excluded from all employment under the British government and are certain of being reinstated at least in their former commissions under that of France by which chiefly they supported themselves and families. When I reflect that France naturally has the affections of all the people, that to make no mention of fees of office and of the vexations of the law, we have done nothing to gain one man in the province by making it his private interest to remain the king’s subject, and that the interests of many would be greatly promoted by a revolution, I own my not having discovered a treasonable correspondence never was proof sufficient to convince me that it did not exist in some degree, but I am inclined to think if such a message had been sent, very few were intrusted with the secret; perhaps the court of France informed a year past by Mons. de Chatelet that the king proposed raising such a regiment of his new subjects caused this piece of intelligence to be communicated to create a jealousy of the Canadians and prevent a measure that might fix their attachments to the British government and probably of those savages who have always acted with them; however that may be, on receiving this news from France last spring, most of the gentlemen in the province applied to me and begged to be admitted to the king’s service, assuring me that they would take every opportunity to testify their zeal and gratitude for so great a mark of favour and tenderness, extended not only to them but to their posterity.”

The passage following is prophetic of the active interference which ten years later France was to take in the American war against Great Britain. “When I consider further that the king’s dominion here is maintained but by a few troops necessarily dispersed without a place of security for their magazines, for their arms or for themselves, amidst a numerous military people, the gentlemen all officers of experience, poor, without hopes that they or their descendants will be admitted into the service of their present sovereign, I can have no doubt but France as soon as determined to begin a war will attempt to regain Canada, should it be intended only to make a diversion while it may reasonably be undertaken with a little hazzard should it fail, and where so much may be gained should it succeed. But should France begin a war in hopes the British colonies will push matters to extremities, and she adopts the project of supporting them in their independent notions, Canada, probably, will then become the principal scene where the fate of America may be determined. Affairs in this situation, Canada in the hands of France would no longer present itself as an enemy to the British colony but as an ally, a friend and protector of their independency.”

The sympathy, respect and even fear of the seigneurs which Carleton evinced in his reports home largely influenced the final passage of the Quebec act. Their firmness and persistency in their demand for their privileges and their influence over the habitant and the possibility of their allegiance being tampered with by France made them prevail over the small but active minority of the commercial class. At this time preparations were being made in London for the settlement of the Quebec difficulty. Secrecy was being observed in high quarters. Lord Hillsborough’s answer, January 4, 1769, to Carleton’s last is also secret, “acknowledging your secret dispatch of November 21st before His Majesty. The remarks you make upon the state and temper of His Majesty’s new subjects will be of great utility in the consideration of the measures now under deliberation and do evince both the propriety and necessity of extending to that grave and faithful people a reaonable participation in those establishments which are to form the basis of the future government of Quebec.” He fears, however, although he agreed with Carleton’s recommendation, that prejudice being so strong it will be difficult to admit them to military offices.

The following summary of investigations conducted for the governments at this time may now be added as evidence of the military strength of the party Carleton wished to conciliate.

Noblesse in the Province of Quebec:

Noblesse in France:

Natives of France who came over to Canada as cadets, served and were preferred in the colony troops and were treated in France as Canadian officers:

The case of the seigneurs and that of the merchants was by this time well understood in England by the colonial authorities and the parliament. The insistent demand for an assembly had been well presented by Masères, while the no less repeated opposition to it in the form of an amended constitution to guarantee French-Canadian liberties had been equally well presented by the seigneurs and their upholders. It remained for legislators to settle which was the more opportune, the delay of the assembly or the immediate concessions of favours to the conquered race.

The session of 1774 was drawing to a close but the culminating point looked to with such eagerness on both sides of the Atlantic, the Quebec act, was not introduced till May 17th, when it quickly passed the three readings in the house of lords. On the 26th it reached the second reading in the commons when the serious opposition began. The debate was continued on June 6th, 7th, 8th and 19th, on which latter day the bill was carried in committee by eighty-three to forty. On the third reading the final vote was fifty-six to twenty. The House of Lords received the bill and its amendments for further consideration on June 17th and the bill was passed on June 22d. The house was prorogued.

The Quebec Act restored the French civil law in toto. It declared that Roman Catholics were to enjoy the free exercise of their religion, though the clergy might only levy tithes on their own subjects. It amended the oath of allegiance so as to make it possible for an honest Roman Catholic to take it.

The act was in a sense a formal renunciation of the British government to Anglicize the province of Quebec.[6] It was the logical ratification of the British government’s promises to protect the laws and institutions of the French-Canadians. It was also a wise move. We know the views of Murray and Carleton. General Haldimand, writing in 1780, six years after it had been tried, confirms this thus: “It requires little penetration to discover that had the system of government solicited by the old subjects been adopted in Canada this colony would, in 1775, have become one of the United States of America.”

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Mr. Gray was the first English notary of Montreal, being named such October 7, 1765; on August 15, 1768, he became an advocate; on the 1st of May, 1776, he succeeded Mr. Turner as sheriff. In 1784 he accepted the position of sub-director of the post in the city.

[2] The above names are not given with this fullness. Some are obscure, hence Mr. Massicotte’s identification of them is used here. (Canadian Antiquarian, January, 1914.)

[3] The object of this letter is to urge the strengthening of the fort at Quebec against the possibility of an uprising.

[4] (Canadian Archives, Q 5, page 269.) This is printed in full in Canadian Archives for 1888, page 44.

[5] This letter does not appear among the state papers in the Canadian Archives.

[6] Cf. F.P. Walton, Dean of the Faculty of Law, McGill University, in an article in the University Magazine, April, 1908, entitled “After the Cession.”

CHAPTER VII

THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR OF 1775

MONTREAL THE SEAT OF DISCONTENT

THE QUEBEC ACT, A PRIMARY OCCASION OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION—MONTREAL BRITISH DISLOYAL—THE COFFEE HOUSE MEETING—WALKER AGAIN—MONTREAL DISAFFECTS QUEBEC—LOYALTY OF HABITANTS AND SAVAGES UNDERMINED—NOBLESSE, GENTRY AND CLERGY LOYAL—KING GEORGE’S BUST DESECRATED—“DELENDA EST CANADA”—“THE FOURTEENTH COLONY”—BENEDICT ARNOLD AND ETHAN ALLEN—BINDON’S TREACHERY—CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS FEEBLY ANSWERED—MILITIA CALLED OUT—LANDING OF THE REBELS—ENGLISH OFFICIAL APATHY—MONTREAL’S PART IN THE DEFENCE OF CANADA—THE FIRST SOLELY FRENCH-CANADIAN COMPANY OF MILITIA—NOTE: THE MILITIA.

The Quebec act, which was hailed by the leaders of the French-Canadians as their Magna Charta, was received with execration in England and America. On the day of the prorogation of Parliament, June 22d, the mayor of London, attended by the recorder, several aldermen and 150 of the common council, went to St. James with a petition to the king to withhold his assent from the bill. The lord chamberlain receiving them, told them that it was too late, that the king was then on the point of going to parliament to give his consent to a bill agreed on by both houses of parliament and that they must not expect an answer. Among other objections this petition claimed: “that the Roman Catholic religion which is known to be idolatrous and bloody is established by this bill and no legal provision is made for the free exercise of our reformed faith nor the security of our Protestant fellow subjects of the church of England in the true worship of Almighty God according to their consciences.”

In the American colonies the Quebec act largely precipitated the American Revolution then being concocted. Strong protest was made, as for example, that shown by the delegates of Philadelphia on September 5, 1774, in the address to the people of England; “By another act the Dominion of Canada is to be so extended, modeled and governed as that by being disunited from us, detached from our interests by civil as well as by religious prejudices, that by their numbers, swelling with Catholic emigrants from Europe, and by their devotion to administration so friendly to their religion, they might become formidable to us, and on occasion be fit instruments in the hands of power to reduce the ancient free Protestant colonies to the same state of slavery as themselves.” Again speaking of the Quebec Act, it adds “Nor can we suppress our astonishment that a British parliament should ever consent to establish in that country a religion which has deluged your Island in blood and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellion through every part of the world.” The Quebec act added fuel to the fire of discontent and the people were ready for war if the Congress said so. The congress of Philadelphia at the same time published a long, bombastic and revolutionary address signed by Henry Middleton, president.

“To the inhabitants of the province of Quebec.”

“We do not ask you to commence hostilities against the government of our common sovereign but we submit it to your consideration whether it may not be expedient to you to meet together in your several towns and districts and elect deputies who after meeting in a provincial congress may chose delegates to represent your province in the continental congress to be held at Philadelphia on the 10th of May, 1775.” An unanimous vote had been resolved “That you should be invited to accede to our federation.” It is interesting to note that, forgetful of the previous letter to the British parliament breathing religious intolerance just referred to, the artful Americans now used also the following argumentum ad hominem: “We are too well acquainted with the liberality of sentiment distinguishing your nation to imagine that difference of religion will prejudice you against a hearty amity with us. You know that the transcendent nature of freedom, elevates those who unite in the cause above all such low-minded infirmities.”

This was printed for wide circulation in Canada and the question of sending the delegates was eagerly discussed in Montreal’s affected circles.

The Quebec act was one of the causes of grievance which led to the American Revolution; it was one of the acts of tyranny specified in the Declaration of Independence, “For abolishing the free system of English law in a neighbouring province (Canada), establishing therein an arbitrary government and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rules into these colonies.”

But how was the bill received in Montreal? Truth to tell, Montreal was the seat of discontent in Canada. Its infection was carried to Quebec. Sir Guy Carleton, who shortly after the passage of the Quebec bill left England with his young wife,[1] the Lady Maria Howard, the third daughter of Thomas, the second Earl of Effingham, to resume his office as governor general, tells how the trouble started at Montreal in his letter to Dartmouth, dated Quebec, 11th of November, 1774. We are there informed that at Quebec there were addresses of loyal acceptation of the situation. “I believe,” wrote Carleton, “that most of them who signed this address were disposed to act up to their declaration, which probably would have been followed by those who did not, if their brethren at Montreal had not adopted very different measures. Whether the minds of the latter are of a more turbulent turn or that they caught the fire from some colonists settled among them, or in reality letters were received from the general congress, as reported, I know not; certain it is, however, that shortly after the said congress had published in all the American papers their approbation of the Suffolk County Resolves[2] in the Massachusetts Assembly, a report was spread at Montreal that letters of importance had been received from the general congress and all the British there flocked to the coffee house to hear the news. Grievances were publicly talked of and various ways for obtaining redress proposed, but that the government might not come to a true knowledge of their intentions a meeting was appointed at the house of a person then absent, followed by several others at the same place and a committee of four named, consisting of Mr. Walker, Mr. Todd, Mr. Price and Mr. Blake, to take care of their interests and prepare plans of redress. Mr. Walker now takes the lead. * * * Their plans being prepared and a subscription commenced, the committee set out for Quebec, attended in form by their secretary, a nephew of Mr. Walker and by profession a lawyer.”

Carleton proceeds to describe how the Montreal emissaries worked up the Quebecers[3] through several “town meetings” to join in petitions, for a repeal of the Quebec act, which were sent to “His Majesty, to the Lords spiritual and temporal, to the Honourable, the Commons.” The chief grievances were that they had lost the protection of the English laws and had thrust on them the laws of Canada which are ruinous to their properties as thereby they lose the invaluable privilege of trial by juries; that in matters of a criminal nature the habeas corpus act is dissolved and they are subjected to arbitrary fines and imprisonment at the will of the governor and council. Masères was entrusted with the promotion of their cause. The petitions were signed on November 12th. In February secret agents from congress were in Montreal to see if an aggressive policy could be safely pursued.

The majority of the English population was on the side of the discontented provinces. The French-Canadian habitants were encouraged to remain neutral, being plied with specious arguments to undermine their loyalty to the king. They were told that they had nothing to lose from the government by this position and everything to gain from the congress faction who threatened reprisals if they became actively opposed to them. But the noblesse, the gentry and the clergy were against the congress, for the Quebec act had guaranteed them the securities for the rights they most valued; they knew that there was little to hope for from the Americans. The Quebec act came into operation on May 1st and an instance of the unsettled state of men’s minds in Montreal is remembered by the incident of the desecration of the king’s bust on this day. It was discovered daubed with black and decorated with a necklace of potatoes, and a cross attached with the words “voila le pape du Canada et le sot Anglais.”[4] Kingsford, following Sanguinet, says that the perpetrator of the foolish insult, for such it was intended to be, was never discovered. The act was regarded as insolent and disloyal and it caused great excitement. A public meeting was called at which 100 guineas were subscribed to discover the perpetrators. The company of grenadiers of the Twenty-Six made a proclamation by beat of drum offering a reward of $200 and a free pardon excepting the person who had disfigured it to any one giving information which would lead to the discovery of the offenders. The principal French-Canadians were greatly annoyed at this proceeding, the words being in French. It was claimed, however, that they were written by an English speaking revolutionist.

On April 19th the affair at Lexington, the commencement of a civil revolution, took place and rapidly the news of it spread. Montreal was well posted. The leaders of the provincial sympathizers here reported to the leaders of congress the easy fall of Canada to the insurgents. Canada was more feverishly coveted at this time than ever. In 1712 Dummers had written: “I am sure it has been the cry of the whole country ever since Canada was delivered up to the French,—Canada est delenda.” In 1756 Governor Livingston of New Jersey had cried: “Canada must be demolished—Delenda est Carthago,—or we are undone.” And now Canada was desired as the “fourteenth colony.”

In Montreal those who had received in the coffee house John Brown, John Adams’ ambassador, were still keeping up communications led by Thomas Walker, Price and others. At last the Congressists thought the conquest was being made, relying on the presumed neutrality of the Canadians. Ticonderoga had fallen in the beginning of May to the revolutionary party under Ethan Allen’s self-constituted forces. The road to Canada was being cleared. Benedict Arnold, sailing from Ticonderoga, had arrived unexpectedly on the morning of the 18th of May at Fort St. John’s and captured the small war sloop there and took prisoners the sergeant and ten men in charge of the military garrison. A second landing was made by Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys at St. John’s on the 18th and 19th with a party said to be three hundred strong, as Carleton was informed at Quebec. There was great consternation in Montreal when the news of the seizure of Ticonderoga and Crown Point and the first capture of St. John’s was brought by Moses Hazen,[5] a merchant of Montreal now living near St. John’s. The military was immediately put in motion by Colonel Templer who dispatched Colonel Preston with a regiment of one hundred men of the Twenty-sixth and this would have cut off Allen’s descent up the lake with his bateaux had not Bindon, a friendly Montreal merchant, hurried on horseback from Longueuil to St. John’s to apprize Allen of the approach of the party from Montreal.[6]

Allen before embarking gave a letter to this same Bindon addressed to one Morrison and the British merchants at Montreal, lovers of liberty, demanding a supply of provisions, ammunition and spirituous liquors which some of them were inclined enough to furnish had they not been prevented. (Carleton to Dartmouth, June 7, 1775, from Montreal.) Bindon in returning to Montreal fell across Colonel Preston who would have detained him but he rode off and, crossing the St. Lawrence, found his way to Montreal with his letters. On arriving he added to the excitement of Montreal—it being market day—by reporting that Preston’s detachment had been defeated. Colonel Templer called a meeting of the citizens for 3 o’clock at the Récollet church to consider the situation. It was numerously attended and it was resolved to take arms for the common defense. During the proceedings Templer received a letter from Preston detailing Bindon’s reprehensible conduct. Bindon was himself present and turned pale as the facts were read. The meeting was adjourned until 10 o’clock next morning when it was held on St. Anne’s common. Templer proposed that the inhabitants should form themselves into companies of thirty and elect their officers. Several well known citizens were chosen to make the roll of those willing to serve.[7] They were of the old Canadian families known for their loyalty. Preston’s detachment returned to Montreal, the men greatly infuriated against Bindon. They had learned that it was from no fault of his they had not been intercepted in the woods and shot down. So soon as they were dismissed for parade they went in search of him. When he was found the men forcibly led him to the pillory with the intention of hanging him, but they were without a ladder and the officers rescued Bindon before one could be obtained. But he was arrested and carried before the magistrates, when he pleaded guilty to imprudence but protested his innocence. To save his character he played the part of a loyalist and took service in the force organized for defense. The action of the troops with regard to Bindon was the occasion of a public meeting called by the party for congress.

Meanwhile a call for volunteers was met by an insignificant enrollment of fifty Canadians who set out for St. John’s under Lieutenant McKay, to remain there until relieved by the Twenty-sixth regiment. Carleton moved the troops from Quebec thither, also. The few troops at Three Rivers were also sent; the garrison of Montreal as well. Carleton arrived at Montreal on May 26th. He found how poorly the French-Canadians had responded to the call to organize themselves into companies. In St. Lawrence suburb the commissioners sent to enroll volunteers had been met by the women with threats of stoning. The loyalty of the French-Canadians had been sorely tampered with. There is not a family resemblance between the letters written by Carleton about the quality of their obedience, before the Quebec act and after. On June 7, 1775, Carleton wrote from Montreal to Dartmouth gloomily reviewing the situation and telling of the preparations for the safety of St. John’s. “The little force we have in the Province was immediately set in Motion and ordered to assemble at or near St. John’s; the Noblesse of this Neighbourhood were called upon to collect their Inhabitants in order to defend themselves. The Savages of these parts likewise had the same orders but though the Gentlemen testified great Zeal, neither their Entreaties or their Example could prevail upon the People; a few of the Gentry consisting principally of the Youth residing in this place and its Neighbourhood, formed a small Corps of Volunteers under the Command of Mr. Samuel McKay and took post at St. John’s; the Indians showed as much Backwardness as the Canadian Peasantry. * * * Within these few Days the Canadians and Indians seemed to return a little to their senses, the Gentry and Clergy had been very useful on this occasion and shewn great Fidelity and Warmth for His Majesty’s Service, but both have lost much of their influence over the People. I proposed trying to form a Militia and if their minds are favourably disposed will raise a Battalion upon the same plan as the other Corps in America, as to Numbers and Experience, and were it established I think it might turn out a great public Utility; but I have my doubts as to whether I shall be able to succeed.

“These Measures that formerly would have been extremely popular require at present a great Degree of Caution and Circumspection; so much have the Minds of the People been tainted by the Cabals and Intrigues, I have from time to time given to your Lordship some information of. I am as yet uncertain whether I shall find it advisable to proceed in the forementioned Undertaking; to defame their King and treat with Insolence and Disrespect, upon all Occasions to speak with the utmost contempt of His Government, to forward Sedition and applaud Rebellion, seems to be what too many of his British-American Subjects in those parts think their undoubted Right.” (Constitutional Documents, 1760-1791, page 450.)

On the 9th of June, Carleton, by proclamation, authorized the calling out of the militia throughout the whole province according to the provisions of the old law, reinstating officers appointed by Murray, Gage and Burton. The movement was not popular even with the new subjects, uninfluenced by the discontent of the disloyalists who feared in the return of the old militia the exactions of the French régime. Chief Justice Hey, then in Montreal, prevailed upon some of the dissatisfied “old” but “loyal” subjects to enroll for good example, which done, they were joined by the French-Canadians so that a sufficient force was ready for a review before General Carleton.

The Indians of Caughnawaga at first hesitated in their loyalty, which had also been tampered with, but they were also brought to serve. At this time Colonel Johnson arrived in Montreal with 300 Indians of the six nations; a council of 600 Indians was held and all agreed to take the field in defense, but not to commence hostilities. The congressists had endeavoured to persuade them to neutrality and the leaven was still working.

July was drawing to a close. Carleton left Montreal by way of Longueuil to inspect the militia at Sorel and then proceeded to Quebec, where he arrived on August 2d, to make preparations for the establishment of the new Legislative Council. This met for the first time on August 17th but it was adjourned on September 7th on account of news of the congress troops again appearing on the Richelieu. The lieutenant governor, Cramahé, writing to Dartmouth from Quebec on September 21st, tells the circumstances how on the news of the rebel army approaching, Carleton set out for Montreal in great haste; that “on the 7th inst. the Rebels landed in the woods near St. John’s and were beat back to their Boats by a Party of Savages encamped at that Place. In this Action the Savages behaved with great Spirit and Resolution and had they remained firm to our Interests probably the Province would have been Saved for this Year, but finding the Canadians in General adverse to taking up Arms for the Defence of their Country, they withdrew and made their peace. After their Defeat the Rebels returned to the Isle aux Noix, where they continued till lately, sending out some Parties and many Emisaries to debauch the Minds of the Canadians and Indians.”

Cramahé adds that no means had been left untried to bring the Canadian peasantry to a sense of their duty and to engage them to take up arms in defense of the province but to no purpose. “The Justice must be done to the Gentry, Clergy and most of the Burgeoisie that they have shewn the Greatest Zeal and Fidelity to the King’s Service and Exerted their best Endeavours to reclaim their infatuated Countrymen. Some Troops and a Ship of War or two would, in all likelihood, have prevented this general Defection.”[8]

Chief Justice Hey, writing at the end of August to the Lord Chancellor, says in a postscript dated September 11th “that all there was to trust to was about five hundred men, two war boats at St. John’s and Chambly; that the situation is desperate and that Canada would shortly be in complete possession of the rebels.” In a further postscript of September 17th he adds that not one hundred Canadians, except in the towns of Quebec and Montreal, are with the king. He holds himself ready to return, to be of more use in England. Carleton, sick at heart with disappointment at the ingratitude of the Canadians who would not march to defend their own country, the uncertainty of the Indians, and the disloyalty of many of the old subjects, and crippled by an inadequate army which was nearly all enclosed in Forts Chambly and St. John’s, nevertheless determined to act boldly on the defensive until General Gage should send from Boston the two regiments earnestly asked for.

Canada was abandoned at this period by as criminal apathy and ignorance on the part of English officials, as it had been before by the French. As Cramahé had pointed out, some troops and a ship of war or two sent from England, or from Gage in America, would have saved Canada from the invasion of 1775.

The part that Montreal took in the defence of Canada must now be told. When the news of the rebels advancing on to St. John’s reached Montreal, Colonel Prescott, then in command, sent an order to the parishes around the city for fifteen men of each company of militia to join the force at St. John’s. Though no report came from without, the Montreal army men came forward to the number of 120 French and Canadians under the command of de Belestre and de Longueuil, many of the volunteers being young men of family and several being prosperous merchants, this being perhaps the first recorded separate unit composed solely of French-Canadians, ever raised as an arm of Imperial defence. The party for St. John’s departed on September 7th. The loyal British volunteers remained to perform duty in Montreal. Time will discover who were truly loyal and who were not.

The Imperial forces in Canada were now represented by the two companies in Montreal, eighty-two men at Chambly and the garrison of St. John’s, consisting of 505 men of all rank, of the Seventh Royal Fusiliers and the Twenty-sixth Regiment, thirty of the Royal Artillery, eight of Colonel McLean’s newly raised corps from Quebec and fifteen of the Royal Horse and 120 volunteers from Montreal—the whole making a total of 696 in the garrison, not counting some artificers.

Around St. John’s and in the district of the Richelieu the inhabitants were either neutral or, with the majority, actively espousing the congress party, some by taking to the field, others by supplying provisions, assisting in the transport of munitions of war and artillery and giving information.

Surely the morale of the once loyal French-Canadian habitants had been undermined effectively by Walker and other malcontents and had been recently further weakened by the manifesto of General Schuyler from the Isle aux Noix on September 15th to his “dear friends and compatriots, the habitants of Canada,” advising them to join him and escape the common slavery prepared for them. Montgomery’s scouting parties, out for supplies and information, did the rest. Of Richard Montgomery, Schuyler’s second in command, we shall hear more.

NOTE

THE MILITIA

The militia, which was called out for service in the field in 1775, 1776, 1812, 1814, 1837, 1839, with the exception of a few small independent corps, consisted of provisionally organized units armed and equipped from the magazines, the regular army, paid by the British government, drilled, disciplined and often commanded by regular officers. After the denudation of Canada of the regular troops at the time of the Crimean war, it became necessary for the colony to take more provisions for its own defence. In 1855 the military act (18 Victoria, Chapter 77), passed by the Upper Canada, for raising and maintaining at the colonial expense, created the nucleus of our present militia system. The “Trent” excitement of 1861-62 and the Fenian raids of 1867-70 further stimulated the movement. The first Dominion militia act (31 Victoria, Chapter 40) was passed in 1868. The present militia act (4 Edward VII, Chapter 23) received assent on August 15, 1904. According to this statute the militia is divided into active and reserve forces.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Carleton was then in his fiftieth year, his wife in her twenty-second. They were married on May 22, 1772.

[2] Adopted on September 9, 1774.

[3] The Montreal agitators were fiercer than those of Quebec. John McCord, of Quebec, wrote April 27, 1775, to Lieutenant Pettigrew, “I pray God to grant peace at any price; the blood of British subjects is very precious.” Walker, writing to Samuel Adams on April 7th, breathes fire: “Few in this colony dare vent their quip but groan in silence and dream of Lettres de Cachets, confiscations and improvements.” The colonists had declared they would fight for their rights and liberties while they had a drop of their blood left.

[4] “This is the pope of Canada and the fool of England.”

[5] Moses Hazen passed his boyhood at Haverhill, in Massachusetts. He served in the Louisberg expedition, rose to be a captain in the Rangers at the taking of Quebec and was remarked by General Wolfe as a good soldier. Later he obtained a lieutenant’s commission in the 44th Foot and soon after the conquest retired on half pay. We then find his name attached to petitions of the Montreal merchants. At this time he appears to have settled near St. John’s, carrying on not only large farming operations but owning sawmills, a potash house and a forge.

[6] When the Americans appeared there in arms he saw, doubtless, the losses war would bring him and he wished them elsewhere. For a time he “trimmed” successfully, but at last was held suspicious by both parties and was held prisoner by both.

[7] Dupuy-Desauniers, de Longueuil, Panet, St. George Dupré, Mesére, Sanguinet, Guy and Lemoine Despins. (See the Abbé Verreau’s valuable book “Invasion du Canada par les Americains.”)

[8] Constitutional Documents, page 435.

CHAPTER VIII

MONTREAL BESIEGED

1775

THE SECOND CAPITULATION

ETHAN ALLEN—HABITANTS’ AND CAUGHNAWAGANS’ LOYALTY TAMPERED WITH—PLAN TO OVERCOME MONTREAL—THE ATTACK—ALLEN CAPTURED—WALKER’S FARM HOUSE AT L’ASSOMPTION BURNED—WALKER TAKEN PRISONED TO MONTREAL—CARLETON’S FORCE FROM MONTREAL FAILS AT ST. JOHN’S—CARLETON LEAVES MONTREAL—MONTREAL BESIEGED—MONTGOMERY RECEIVES A DEPUTATION OF CITIZENS—THE ARTICLES OF CAPITULATION—MONTGOMERY ENTERS BY THE RECOLLECT GATE—WASHINGTON’S PROCLAMATION.

While Montgomery at Isle aux Noix is planning his descent on St. John’s, the portal of Canada, twelve miles lower down, it will be well to follow Ethan Allen on his venturesome and abortive attempt to take Montreal. Ethan Allen, of Bennington, was, as Carleton had reported, “an outlaw in the province of New York, who had become famous by his daring capture of Ticonderoga and had been emboldened enough by his success to persuade the New York congress to raise a small regiment of rangers.” Thus this freebooter, with his Green Mountain Boys, became a commissioned officer. He got employment under Schuyler and it was Ethan Allen with John Brown, now Major, who had formerly been sent to Montreal to sound the merchants, who bore Schuyler’s manifesto from Isle aux Noix to the habitants of Canada. From parish to parish he hurried and his ready wit and hustling address captivated the peasant housewives who, being educated better than their husbands, read the proclamation with approval to them. He visited the Caughnawaga Indians and played havoc with their loyalty, receiving beads and wampum from them. His reappointment was from Montgomery, then commencing the investment of St. John’s, who, it is said, wanting to find employment for Allen at a distance from himself, sent him to gather up a recruit of Canadians around Chambly. According to his own account he was easily successful. Writing to Montgomery on September 20th from St. Ours, “You may rely on it,” he says, “that I shall join you in three days with five hundred or more Canadian volunteers. * * * Those that used to be enemies to our cause come cap in hand to me; and I swear by the Lord I can raise three times the number of our army provided you continue the siege.” Yet, on the night of September 23d, when he found himself at Longueuil looking across the St. Lawrence to the city which it was his ambition to capture, he had only about eighty still following. He was returning to St. John’s next morning, and when two miles from Longueuil he met John Brown, now Colonel in command of a considerable force at La Prairie. These two, retiring to a house with some others, conceived the plan of attacking Montreal. The plan was for Brown with two hundred followers to cross over the St. Lawrence in canoes above the town, and Allen’s party below it; each would silently approach the gate at his end of the city; Brown’s party would give three Huzzas! Allen’s would respond and then both would fall to.

It was a brilliant idea and elated Allen. Montreal, captured by a force of two to three thousand and the easy fall of the rest of Canada had been the vision put before congress often enough. “I still maintain my views,” says Colonel Easton before the congress of Massachusetts on June 6, 1775, “that policy demands that the colonies advance an army of two or three thousand men into Canada and environ Montreal. This will inevitably fix and confirm the Canadians and Indians in our interests.” On June 13, 1775, Benedict Arnold wrote to congress, sketching out a plan by which with an army of 2,000 men, Chambly and St. John’s should be cut off with 700 men, 300 more should guard the boats and the line of retreat and a grand division of 1,000 should appear before Montreal, whose gates on the arrival of the Americans were to be opened by friends there “in consequence of a plan for that purpose already entered into by them.”

On May 29th Allen, over confident, had written to the Continental Congress: “Provided I had but 500 men with me at St. John’s when we took the king’s sloop, I would have advanced to Montreal.” On June 2d he wrote to the New York congress: “I will lay my life on it that with 1,500 men and a proper train of artillery I will take Montreal,” and on July 12th to Trumbull that if his Green Mountain Boys had not been formed into a battalion under certain regulations and command he would further “advance then into Canada and invest Montreal.”

Here, then, was Allen to attempt to take the city of his dreams with a smaller force than his dreams provided for! He had forgotten, perhaps, that Carleton was in that city. He was elated that he had added about thirty English Americans to his force, but he was sorry that Thomas Walker had been communicated with at his home in L’Assomption. Night came on. Allen’s little fleet spent all the night being driven backward and forward by the currents, but at last after six crossings were made to land his men in the limited number of available boats, on the morning of the 25th the daring invaders were all landed at Longue Pointe. But they heard no Huzza! from Brown’s party from the other side of the city. Brown had either known better or was jealous of Ethan Allen’s desire to claim the capture of Montreal, as he had done that of Ticonderoga.

Longue Pointe was not unfriendly but thought discretion better than valour. Allen saw himself in a foolish position; his slightness of force would soon be known in Montreal through the escape from his guards of a Montrealer named Desautel going out early to his Longue Pointe farm.

Montreal was in great excitement and confusion at the news of the presence of the notorious New Hampshire incendiary. Even some of the officers took to the ships.[1] It was, however, only at 9 o’clock that Carleton heard the news. There was a hurry and scurry and a beating of drums and the parade ground of the Champ de Mars behind the barracks was filled with the people. Carleton briefly told the citizens of their dangers and ordered them to join the troops at the barracks. The instinct of self-preservation in a common danger made most obey except some, chiefly American colonists, that stepped forward and turned off the contrary way.

COLONEL ARNOLD

GENERAL RICHARD MONTGOMERY

HOUSE AT THE CORNER OF NOTRE DAME AND ST. PETER STREETS

Occupied by Montgomery and the American officers during the winter of 1775-76.

HOUSE ON THE CORNER OF RUE BONSECOURS AND ST. PAUL STREET

Occupied by government representatives from 1775 to 1791.

At last the Montreal party was ready. They dashed through the Quebec gate, smashing the boats there to cut off the enemies retreat, and hurried up north. The fight with Allen’s men began at 2 o’clock and lasted an hour and three-quarters by the watch. Though carefully using all natural advantages of the ground, ditches and coverts chosen beforehand, Allen himself was compelled to surrender his sword to Peter Johnson, a natural son of Sir William, “providing I can be treated with honour,” he added. The officers received him with politeness, like gentlemen. In the fight Allen lost twelve to fifteen men, killed and wounded; some had fled, but a body of forty prisoners were marched to the city. The defenders had lost only six to eight of their men, so it was a famous victory. When the prisoners were brought before Colonel Prescott in Barrack Yard an extraordinary incident occurred, according to “Allen’s Narrative.”

“Are you the Colonel Allen who took Ticonderoga?” thundered out the British soldier. “The very man,” was the reply. Prescott angrily raised his cane to strike the roughly dressed, dust-stained ranger in a short deerskin coat, breeches of sagathy, and woolen cap. “You had better not strike me, I’m not used to it,” cried the aroused prisoner, shaking his fist at the angry commander of the garrison. Prescott then turned to the habitant prisoners and ordered a sergeant to bayonet them. Allen then stepped between his men and the soldiers and, tearing open his clothes and exposing his shaggy bosom, exclaimed to Prescott: “I am the one to blame. Thrust your bayonets into my breast. I am the sole cause of their taking up arms.” A long pause. Finally muttered Prescott, “I will not execute you now, but you shall grace a halter at Tyburn, —— ye!” There was no suitable prison in Montreal so Allen was put into the hold of the Gaspé in the harbour to wait until he should be shipped to England for trial.

Montreal was saved for the present; and Allen’s failure, as the governor reported it, gave a favourable turn to the minds of the people and many began now to come back to loyalty. It seems strange, the impunity with which known plotters had been hitherto treated. Carleton would now make an example. He turned his eyes sternly upon Thomas Walker. Already Mrs. Walker had been told that her husband must quit the country. Now an order for arrest on the charge of high treason was issued. Prescott handed the warrant to Captain Bellair. On the night of the 5th-6th of October in their comfortable farm house at L’Assomption they were surprised by a posse of twenty regulars and twelve Canadians. Walker, determined to resist, shot into the crowd, who fusilladed back. At last the four corners of the house were fired. As the house began to burn, the smoke within almost suffocated Mrs. Walker, so that he took her to a window and held her by the shoulders while she lowered herself in her nightdress as far as she could, clinging to the windowsill. Finally she was rescued by one of the soldiers setting a ladder to the wall. The floor that Walker was standing on was in flames, and on the promise of good treatment from the soldiers, he surrendered. Their property was plundered and destroyed and the farm house wrecked. The Walkers were given some wraps to cover their unfinished attire and were hurried to Prescott at Montreal. Charged with rebellion, Walker was taken to the barracks and for thirty-three days and nights he was confined in his solitary cell on a straw pallet under a heavy load of irons. Then he was taken to Lisotte’s armed schooner and buried in the hold prison, to be taken for trial over seas. It was a terrifying example to all, a leading citizen, a wealthy merchant, a Montreal magistrate and a felon! Truly a warning to traitors.

Using this as a propitious moment Carleton issued another levy of men from the militia around Montreal. That October he was so encouraged that he assembled on St. Helen’s island, facing Montreal, seven or eight hundred men, counting Indians, and later on the afternoon of October 30th pushed off, accompanied by Luc la Corne and Lorimier with thirty-five or forty boats for the shore of Longueuil to bear relief to the invested fort of St. John’s. Alan Maclean was to go from Quebec to meet Carleton at St. John’s. But as they approached the harbour they were met with such havoc by a force under Seth Warner that had been making use of Longueuil Castle and who had a four-pounder emptying grape and a goodly backing of musketry at the landing, and quickly playing upon the astonished flotilla, so that it turned around, bearing some forty or fifty dead and as many wounded. No American received a scratch.

The grand stroke had failed. Maclean’s force heard the bad news and many began to desert. It was a game of battledore and shuttlecock for the French Canadian peasantry. It was not that their want of loyalty was to be blamed as the practical politics of the affair. It was a war of Englishmen again Englishmen, and they were for the winners. The loss of Chambly was the turning point in the siege of St. John’s which had been going on since September 18th. Chambly had been surrendered by Major Stafford after a siege of one day and a half, on October 17th, a sorry event, for it was well supplied with winter provisions and ammunition. The rebels, with the aid of others, were able for six weeks to reinforce Montgomery at St. John’s, when he would have been forced by the approach of winter to retire. Thus on the morning of the 3d of November, at 10 o’clock, the surrender of St. John’s was made by Colonel Preston to Montgomery.

The fall of Montreal was now assured and with winter approaching, Montgomery secured his position at Chambly, St. John’s and the Richeleau district. At Longueuil, Warren was posted with 300 men. The complacent Indians at Caughnawaga willingly enough received an order to remain neutral. Everything was ready for the march on Montreal and Montgomery advanced to La Prairie, there collecting all the boats and bateaux available for the transportation of the troops across the river to the city. On the 11th of November news came to Carleton in Montreal that Montgomery was crossing over. It was now his policy to leave. The capture was inevitable and he had prepared for it since the fall of St. John’s. He spiked the guns and burned the bateaux he could not use and caused the munitions, provisions and baggage to be loaded on the three armed sloops. About one hundred and twenty regular troops were embarked on the vessels available. In the evening at 5 o’clock Carleton went aboard. Brigadier Prescott and the military and staff accompanied. Eleven sail went down to Quebec. At Lavaltrie, twelve miles west of Sorel, owing to contrary winds the flotilla was detained during the 13th and 14th of November. On the 15th a written summons came from Colonel Easton calling on Carleton to capitulate. On the night of the 16th and 17th of November Carleton went on the barge of Captain Bouchette and arrived at Quebec on Sunday, November 19th, escaping the batteries erected beyond Sorel to intercept the fleet at Lavaltrie.

On the same day this fleet was visited by Major Brown with a peremptory order to surrender. Prescott saw no way out of it; he first threw the powder into the St. Lawrence and then surrendered. The congress troops now took charge of the fleet and with a favourable north wind convoyed the army and fleet back to Montreal. Walker, a prisoner in irons in the hold, was released as soon as possible. The fleet arrived on November 22d. The prisoners were ordered by Montgomery to parade on the river front the following morning before the market and then lay down their arms.

We must go back to the 11th of November and visit defenseless Montreal. The loyalists were sad, as having been at a funeral, in the passing away of its defenders. The discontented, now that Montreal was on the point of changing hands, openly abandoned their arms and threw off their disguise. That night Montgomery’s force encamped on St. Paul’s Island. On Sunday morning, about 9 o’clock, when many were going to church, news arrived that Montgomery was coming from the island to Point St. Charles and a committee of twelve citizens was appointed to go to meet him. Meanwhile he had arrived and the inhabitants of the suburbs west of the city had assured him of their neutrality. He had also received encouraging messages from the disaffected within the city, for Bindon, now a sentry at one of the embrasures, traitorously allowed a partner of Price, whom we have mentioned as in league with the Boston party, and another, to communicate with the congress party now advancing. Montgomery must have learnt that there was a strong following in the city prepared to side with him and that those opposed to him were handicapped for want of ammunition and provision. It was reliance on these elements within and without the city, with the knowledge that few were willing to take up arms against him, that made it possible for Montgomery with his slight force to capture a city of 1,200 inhabitants.

The deputation meeting him was told that he gave them four hours to consider the terms on which they would accede to his authority. Being told that he must not approach nearer the city, he answered that it was somewhat cold weather and he immediately sent fifty men to occupy the Récollet suburb, and before 4 o’clock his whole force was established there. This made an uproar in the town and the loyalists were for shooting on them. The articles of capitulation were prepared and presented to Montgomery. “I will examine them and reply soon,” said he. They demanded that “The religious orders should enjoy their rights and properties, that both the French and English should be maintained in the free exercise of their religion, that trade in the interior and upper part of the provinces and beyond the seas should be uninterrupted, that passports on legitimate business should be granted, that the citizens and inhabitants of Montreal should not be called upon to bear arms against the mother country, that the inhabitants of Montreal and of every part of the province, who have borne arms for the defense of the province then prisoners, should be released, that the courts of justice should be reestablished and the judges elected by the people, that the inhabitants of the city should not be forced to receive the troops, that no habitant of the country parishes and no Indians should be admitted into the city until the commandant had taken possession of it and made provision for its safety.”

The general in reply stated first, “that owing to the city of Montreal having neither ammunition, adequate artillery, troops nor provisions and not having it in its power to fulfill one article of the treaty, it could claim no title to its capitulation, yet the continental army had a generous disdain of every act of oppression and violence; they are come for the express purpose of giving liberty and security.”[2] He accepted most of the provisions laid down. But from the unhappy differences of Great Britain and the colonies he was unable to engage that trade should be continued with the mother country. In acceding to the demands he made it understood that the engagements entered upon by him would be binding on his successors.

Next day, the 13th of November, the congress troops, many of whom wore the scarlet uniforms of the British troops found in the military stores at St. John’s and Chambly, entered by the Recollet gate (at the corner of McGill and Notre Dame streets) and, receiving the keys to the storehouses of the city, marched proudly along Notre Dame Street to the barracks opposite what is now known as Jacques Cartier Square.

The capture of Montreal was quickly made known in the American province. “Dispatches for His Excellency, General Washington; news of Montreal’s quiet submission of that city to the victorious arms of the United Colonies of America” was soon announced in the New England Chronicle.

Montgomery remained in Montreal until November 28th. News came of the success of the detachment placed at Sorel. For, on the 22d, as already stated, the eleven vessels captured by Colonel Easton at Lavaltrie were brought into Montreal with Colonel Prescott and the military prisoners and the released Thomas Walker. One reason for Montgomery’s delay was due to the expectancy of the arrival of the detachments he had ordered. He now left General David Wooster in command of the detachment kept behind in the city and went down the river to join Benedict Arnold, who had been unsuccessful in his attack on Quebec, and to take command of the besieging forces. For unless Quebec were taken, Canada could not be said to have been subdued.

Wooster’s first action was to disseminate Washington’s proclamation confided to Arnold for the inhabitants of Canada. It started “Friends and Brethren.” The second paragraph runs thus: “Above all we rejoice that our enemies have been deceived with regard to you. They have persuaded themselves, they have even dared to say, that the Canadians were not capable of distinguishing between the blessings of liberty and the wretchedness of slavery; that gratifying the vanity of a little circle of nobility would blind the people of Canada. By such artifices they hoped to bind you to their views, but they have been deceived; they see with a chagrin equal to our joy that you are enlightened, generous and virtuous; that you will not renounce your own rights or serve as instruments to deprive your fellow subjects of theirs. Come then, my brethren, unite with us in an undissoluble union, let us run together to the same goal. We have taken up arms in defence of our liberty, our property, our wives and our children; we are determined to preserve them or die. We look forward with pleasure to that date not far remote, we hope, when the inhabitants of America shall have one sentiment and the full enjoyment of a free government.”

ENDORSEMENT ON SAMUEL ADAMS’ LETTER OF FEBRUARY 21, 1775

FROM LETTER OF APRIL 8, 1775, TO ADAMS AND HIS ASSOCIATES

SAMUEL ADAMS

GEORGE WASHINGTON

FROM SCHUYLER’S LETTER TO WASHINGTON

The reference to the little circle of noblesse blinding the people of Canada shows the line of argument which had been making the people, until lately so happy, now so discontented and disloyal. Will any impartial student of Canada under the French régime say that the Bostonians’ insinuation of oppression as being the habitual lot of the French Canadian peasants, was founded on fact? They had succeeded so far in unsettling for a time a people newly enfranchised with powers hitherto not entrusted to them, but the reaction will follow and the argument of slavery and oppression will fall on deaf ears. To the credit of the clergy, seigneurs and professional classes of this period be it said that they saved Canada.

If the French habitant was weak in 1775, watching which way to jump, he will be strong in 1812 and 1813 and the victory of Chateauguay, though but a “bush fight,” will serve to consolidate the British rule in Canada. It has been noticed that the French Canadian loyalty is of the “head” rather than of the “heart.” But the analogy between French Canadians and Scotchmen has also been pointed out. The latter point with pride to Bannockburn as well as to Waterloo. They, with the help of time, have a hearty affection for the Empire. So it is with the French Canadians in a more and more growing manner.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] There must have been a miscellaneous collection of canoes, and one or two bateaux.

[2] A transcript lately issued by the Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Society of Montreal, of the expense book of the commissary under Arnold which has entries from February to May, 1776, goes to show that, to give the invader his due, large sums of money were disbursed for beef and other supplies. During the war bread was very dear and wheat was scarce. A brown loaf cost thirty sols or 1 s. and 3 d. a pound; white, 25 sols, or 1 s. ½ d. a pound.

CHAPTER IX

MONTREAL, AN AMERICAN CITY SEVEN MONTHS UNDER CONGRESS

1776

THE CONGRESS ARMY EVACUATES MONTREAL

MONTREAL UNDER CONGRESS—GENERAL WOOSTER’S TROUBLES—MONEY AND PROVISIONS SCARCE—MILITARY RULE—GENERAL CONFUSION—THE CHATEAU DE RAMEZAY, AMERICAN HEADQUARTERS—THE COMMISSIONERS: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, SAMUEL CHASE AND CHARLES CARROL—FLEURY MESPLET, THE PRINTER—THE FAILURE OF THE COMMISSIONERS—NEWS OF THE FLIGHT FROM QUEBEC—MONTREAL A STORMY SEA—THE COMMISSIONERS FLY—THE WALKERS ALSO—THE EVACUATION BY THE CONGRESS TROOPS—NOTES: I. PRINCIPAL REBELS WHO FLED; II. DESCRIPTION OF DRESS OF AMERICAN RIFLES.

Meanwhile the efforts of Montgomery and Arnold with a force of about one thousand, five hundred men, among whom were the Canadians under Major Duggin, formerly a Quebec barber, were engaged in besieging Quebec, a more difficult task than they expected. On the last day of 1775 Montgomery met his death. Arnold was wounded in the foot and many of the congress soldiers had caught the smallpox. Still the siege went on, although under great depression. The death of Montgomery had placed General Wooster in command of the province till the appointment of General Charles Lee in February. “For God’s sake,” wrote Arnold to Wooster at Montreal on December 31st, “order as many men as you can possibly spare consistent with the safety of Montreal.”

But Wooster had his own troubles. The Canadians around him could not be relied on. Besides he had no cash. Price, of Montreal, who had enticed the Americans over, had enabled them to subsist as an army, having already advanced about £20,000; but now he was “almost out of that article himself,” and could find no one in the city willing to lend. (Price to General Schuyler, January 5th.) Wooster, therefore, looked upon Montreal as the place to be reserved for a retreat. “I shall not be able to spare any men to reinforce Colonel Arnold,” he wrote to Schuyler on January 5th. “What they will do at Quebec for want of money God only knows, but none can be spared from Montreal.” Yet in the last week of January Wooster had been enabled to send about one hundred and twenty from Montreal.

During February Wooster’s letters from Montreal were gloomy: “Our flour is nearly expended, we have not more than enough for the army for one week; we can purchase no provisions or wood or pay for the transporting of anything without hard cash. Our credit sinks daily. All the provisions and wood that we want for the army for two or three weeks to come must be purchased and transported to camp by the middle of March. There will be no passing for a month or six weeks; these things must be provided immediately, or the consequences will be dreadful.”

In Montreal, Wooster found other trouble. The clergy were in favour of the British régime. On January 6th, writing to Warner, the commandant wrote: “The clergy refuse absolution to all who have shown themselves our friends and preach damnation to all those who will not take up arms against us.” Then there was nothing but paper money, which had little value, seeing that it might never be redeemed. At Quebec and Montreal men were forced to serve congress, even when legally freed. Quarrels between the military authorities such as that between Schuyler and Wooster were not edifying to the Canadians, used to harmony in government. A mutiny arose among the soldiers who refused to go to serve at Quebec. Six ring leaders were flogged. On the 14th of January an ordinance of General Wooster appeared at the church doors forbidding anyone speaking against congress under penalty of being sent out of the province. It is to be owned that orders were given for the soldiers to live peacefully and honestly with their Canadian brethren, but in spite of this, there were many individual abuses, at least. The people began to feel that the strangers who came to them as suppliants to succour them, ruled them with military law at times despotic. General Lee gave an order to General Wooster which made the Montreal merchants consider their trade injured; he was told “to suffer the merchants of Montreal not to send any of their woolen cloths out of the town.”

The loyalists were named tories and Wooster became convinced “of the great necessity of sending many of their leaders out of the province,” and he would have sent Hertel de Rouville, the Sulpician Montgolfier, and many others out of the way, and it is said no less than forty sleds of indignant tories made the journey to Albany.[1] Carleton, be it remembered, took a long time before he requested Walker to leave the country. When expostulated with by a number of citizens Wooster answered: “I regard the whole of you as enemies and rascals.” He was unwise enough to have the churches shut up on Christmas eve. Altogether the reports, sent to Schuyler and others, indicated that there was great confusion in Montreal and Canada. Soon it began to appear as if nothing but terror was keeping the Canadians. A plot was laid as early as January to overcome the garrison of Montreal.[2] Secretly many were combining under the royal flag.

FROM THE COMMISSIONERS’ LETTER TO CONGRESS, MAY 1, 1776

FROM THOMAS WALKER’S LETTER TO ADAMS, MAY 30, 1776

POSTSCRIPT OF ARNOLD’S LETTER TO CLINTON, MAY 12, 1776

FROM CARLETON’S LETTER TO GERMAIN, MAY 25, 1776

FROM MONTGOMERY’S LETTER TO MONTREAL, NOVEMBER 12, 1775

Meanwhile at Quebec, Carleton pursued Fabian tactics and would not venture out into the open. He had seen this mistake made by Wolfe, and he had not been his quarter-master-general for nothing, so he waited for the ships from England to come, as indeed they did, at last, on May 6th, the Surprise leading, followed by the Isis and the Martin. The flight of the Americans to Montreal soon began.

At Montreal exciting circumstances had occurred at the American headquarters, the Château de Ramezay, which had been that of Gage, Burton and other British commandants since it had ceased being the seat of the East India Fur Company under the French regime.

On April 26th its doors had opened to General John Thomas on his arrival to take command of the army before Quebec, and its council chamber had been the scene of hasty conference with Arnold and other gentlemen. It was now to receive the commissioners from congress, long asked for by Montgomery and Schuyler, but only named and appointed on the 15th of February by the resolution “that a committee of three (two of whom to be members of congress) to be appointed to proceed to Canada, there to pursue such instructions as shall be given them by congress.” The instructions given later directed the commissioners to represent to the Canadians in the strongest terms that it was the earnest desire of congress to adopt them as a side colony under the protection of the Union and to urge them to take a part in the contest then on, that the people should be guaranteed “the free and undisturbed exercise of their religion,” that the clergy should have the full, perfect and peaceable possession and enjoyment of all their estates and the entire ecclesiastical administration beyond an assurance of full religious liberty and civil privileges to every sect of Christians should be left in the hands of the good people of that province and such legislature as they should constitute. The commissioners started from New York on April 2d. They were men of mark—the great Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase of Maryland, and Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, described by John Adams as a “gentleman of independent fortune, perhaps the largest in America, one hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand pounds sterling, educated in some university in France, though a native of America, of great abilities and learning, complete master of the French language, a professor of the Roman Catholic religion, yet a warm, a firm, a zealous supporter of the rights of America in whose cause he has hazarded his all.” With the commissioners was adjoined John Carroll, the brother of Charles. He was a clever ecclesiastic, become through the suppression of the Society of Jesus, an ex-Jesuit who was afterwards to become the first archbishop of Baltimore. Much reliance was placed on his intermediary overtures to the Canadian clergy. On their arrival at St. John’s the commissioners felt their first check. They had carried no hard cash with them. They were brought up at once against the fundamental difficulty. In their letter to congress on May 1st the commissioners wrote, “It is impossible to give you a just idea of the lowness of continental credit here from the want of hard money and the prejudice it is to our affairs. Not the most trifling service can be purchased without an appearance of instant pay in silver or gold. The express we sent from St. John’s to inform the general of our arrival there and to request carriages for La Prairie, had to wait at the ferry till a friend, passing, changed a dollar for us into silver.” This friend, a Mr. McCartney, had also to pay for the calèches for La Prairie or they would have had to remain stranded.

They reached Montreal on April 27th and were received by Arnold with some ostentation at the Château, where guests among the French ladies were invited to meet them. That night after supper the commissioners lodged in Thomas Walker’s house.

Walker’s house was that originally built by Bécancourt, which became the depôt of the Compagnie des Indes. It passed finally into the McGill family. It stood immediately west of the Château de Ramezay. It was demolished in 1903.

With the commissioners there came about the same time the French printer, Fleury Mesplet. He was brought, along with his printing press, to spread campaign literature for the congress. His press was soon installed in the basement of the Château. It had been his press in Philadelphia from which the original proclamation of 1775 to the Canadians originated. He became the first printer of Montreal. The first book published by him is supposed to be “Réglement de la Confrèrie de l’Adoration Perpetuelle du Saint Sacrément et de la Bonne Mort, chez F. Mesplet et C. Berger, 1776.”[3] Another book bearing the same date, 1776, and published by Mesplet at Montreal, is “Jonathan et David, ou le Triomphe de L’Amitié,” tragedie en trois actes, representèe par les ecoliers de Montréal, a Montréal chez Fleury Mesplet et C. Berger, Imprimeurs et Libraires, 1776.

John Carroll early began to get in touch with the clergy, but he found an impenetrable barrier—the clergy had nothing to gain by swerving from their allegiance to England. What more than the Quebec act could the provincials give them? They feared the intolerance of the Americans. Had they not seen Wooster’s conduct? They were now offering religious freedom, but the clergy could not forget the letter addressed by congress to the British people in 1774, after the Quebec act, containing this significant sentence: “Nor can we suppress our astonishment that a British parliament should ever consent to establish in that country a religion that has deluged your island in blood and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellion through every part of the world.”

The political arguments of the commissioners were of no avail, either. The great Continental Congress was there before their eyes, and the great Continental Congress was bankrupt. The paper money was discredited. Not all Charles Carrol’s wealth was of avail, unless it were in hard cash. An urgent request was sent to Philadelphia to send £20,000 in specie. Only one-twelfth of this could be promised.

There were other grievances, but most were from the non-payment of money lent or furnished for supplies. On the commissioners fell the superintendence of the army. This was no easy task, as provisions were giving out. Smallpox was breaking out among the soldiers. The commissioners were not trained to rule the army and in the confused state of affairs they recognized the failure of their mission. In their letter of May 17th to congress they said: “The possession of this country must finally be settled by the sword. We think our stay here no longer of service to the publick * * * and we await with impatience the further orders of the congress.”

FROM FRANKLIN’S LETTER TO CHASE AND CARROLL

FROM CHASE AND CARROLL’S LETTER TO THOMAS

JOHN CARROLL

FRANKLIN MEMORIAL TABLET (ENGLAND)

CHARLES CARROLL

LETTER FROM CHASE AND CARROLL TO GENERAL WOOSTER

CARROLL’S REPORT ON MRS. WALKER’S CONDUCT

The commissioners in their first report from Montreal blamed Wooster and declared him totally unfit for his command; the state of Canada was desperate; everything was in confusion, there was no discipline, the army unpaid, credit exhausted. “Such is our extreme want of flour that we were obliged yesterday to seize by force sixteen barrels to supply the garrison with bread. We cannot find words to describe our miserable condition.”

To crown the difficulty of the commissioners, the news of the Quebec disaster and flight reached their ears on the 9th of May. “Every military plan and hope staggered under the shock. Montreal became a stormy sea.” Dreading that one of the British frigates, which were ascending the river but with an unfavourable wind, would run up and cut them off, the commissioners began to prepare to leave the city.

The state of Montreal after the news of Quebec, is well described by Justin H. Smith in “Our Fight for the Fourteenth Colony,” (Vol. II, page 374): “Montreal is listening eagerly for his drum (Captain Young’s of St. Anne’s Fort).” Hazen had declared a month before, “There is nothing but plotting and preparations making against us throughout the whole district.” When it was proposed to abandon the town after the news of the flight from Quebec arrived, Arnold feared the people would attack his departing troops. On all sides the tories whom Ripley had found very plenty in March but mostly living like woodchucks underground, were now showing noses and even feet. The commissioners, getting daily intimations of plots hatching and insurrections intended, had abandoned perforce the rôle of dispensing pure liberty, filled the jails with malcontents and sent others into the exile they had lately protested against, but these measures did not reach the seat of the trouble. Night after night a rising was talked of and expected; Lieutenant Colonel Vose would go round the barrack, waken the men coming down with smallpox and make them dress themselves and load their guns. “If they do take us it shall not be for nothing,” he quietly said.

On the morning of May 17th Benjamin Franklin left, accompanied by Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Price.[4] Next day he was joined by Father Carroll and the party ascended Lake Champlain for New York. Walker joined them later and both were left at Albany, “civilly but coldly.” So he passes out of the history of Montreal.

The other commissioners, Carroll and Chase, left Montreal on May 29th for Chambly for a council of war; on the 31st they left St. John’s; on the 2d of June they left for Crown Point, a distance of 106 miles. Thus ended their unsuccessful mission.

How finally the congress troops were driven out of the country, how the additional reinforcements arrived at Quebec on June 1st under Burgoyne, is Canadian history beyond that of Montreal. Suffice it to say that by June 17th things had become so hot in Montreal for Arnold who saw that the junction of the Canadas with the colonies was now at an end, that the evacuation commenced on this day. In two hours, the sick, the baggage and the garrison, reduced by this time to 300 men, embarked on eleven bateaux and in two hours more a procession of carts, escorted by the troops, set out from Longueuil for La Prairie.[5]

Wilkinson, who was Arnold’s aide-de-camp in Montreal, has placed it on record “that among the property on the bateaux was the merchandise obtained by Arnold in Montreal. It was transferred to Albany and sold for Arnold’s benefit.” “This transaction is notorious,” says Wilkinson (Volume I, page 58), “and excited discontent and clamour in the army; yet it produced no regular inquiry, although it hurt him in the esteem of every man of honour and determined me to leave his family on the first proper occasion.”

NOTE I

PRINCIPAL REBELS WHO FLED

That those of the French Canadians of the better class who sided with the Bostonians were very few is evinced by a list sent by Carleton to Lord George Germain on May 9, 1777. There is only one French name mentioned and that is Pelissier, of Three Rivers, who was a Frenchman from France. The list is referred to in a postscript by Carleton as follows: “Enclosed your Lordship will receive a list of principal leaders of sedition here. We have still too many remaining amongst us that have the same inclination, though they at present act with more caution and so much subtlety as to avoid the punishment they justly deserve.” The enclosure is headed “List of the principal persons settled in the province who very zealously served the rebels in the winter of 1775-1776 and fled upon their leaving it, the place they were settled at, and the country are natives of as England, Scotland, Ireland, America or France.”

At Quebec two Englishmen, two Scotchmen and seven Americans are named. At Three Rivers, Pelissier, a Frenchman. At Montreal were named:

NOTE II

DESCRIPTION OF DRESS OF AMERICAN RIFLES

Lossing’s Field Book—Vol. I, p. 195—thus describes the dress of the invaders: “Each man of the three rifle companies (Morgan’s, Smith’s and Hendrick’s) bore a rifle-barreled gun, a tomahawk or small axe, and a long knife, usually called a scalping knife, which served for all purposes in the woods. His underdress, by no means in a military style, was covered by a deep ash-coloured hunting shirt,—leggings and moccasins, if the latter could be procured. It was a silly fashion of those times for riflemen to ape the manners of the savages. The Canadians who first saw these (men) emerge from the woods said they were vêtus en toile—‘clothed in linen.’ The word ‘toile’ was changed to ‘tôle,’ iron plated. By a mistake of a single word the fears of the people were greatly increased, for the news spread that the mysterious army that descended from the wilderness was clad in sheet-iron.

“The flag used by what was called the Continental troops, of which the force led into Canada by Arnold and Montgomery was a part, was of plain crimson, and perhaps sometimes it may have had a border of black. On the 1st of January, 1776, the army was organized and the new flag then adopted was first unfurled at Cambridge at the headquarters of General Washington, the present residence of the poet Longfellow.

“That flag was made up of thirteen stripes, seven red and six white, but the Union was the Union of the British flag of that day, blue bearing the Cross of St. Andrew combined with the Cross of St. George and a diagonal red cross for Ireland. This design was used by the American army till after the 14th of June, 1777, when Congress ordered that the Union should be changed, the Union of the English flag removed and in its place there should be a simple blue field with thirteen white stars, representing the thirteen colonies declared to be states.

“Since then there has been no change in the flag, except that a star is added as each new state is admitted.”

W.C. Howells.[6]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Among those banished by Wooster was St. Luc de la Corne. He had been well treated under the British régime and was one of the first legislative council formed by Carleton. He is reported to have been a trimmer during the late troubles.

[2] One advantage in holding Montreal was that British supplies and presents for the savages could not reach the interior that way. Yet the Americans had little means of supplying the Indian trade. To meet the difficulty, the commissioners, desirous of being on good terms with the Indians up country, offered early on their arrival, passports to all traders who would enter into certain engagements to do nothing in the upper country prejudicial to the continental interests.

[3] The first book published in Canada is believed to be “Catéchisme du Diocèse de Sens Imprimé a Quebec, chez Brown et Gilmour, 1765.” The latter were the proprietors of the Quebec Gazette, the first journal, established on June 21, 1764. The Gazette Littéraire appeared in French, June 3, 1778, and in French and English.

[4] Mrs. Price, according to Franklin’s letter to the commissioners, had three wagon-loads of baggage with her. The Walkers “took such liberties in taunting at our conduct in Canada that it almost came to a quarrel. I think they both have an excellent talent in making themselves enemies and I believe even here they will never be long without them.” (Franklin’s Works, Vol. VIII, pp. 182-3.)

[5] On July 4, 1776, the American Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence and in 1781, on July 9th, the Articles of Confederation were ratified.

[6] Cf. Lemoine’s “Picturesque Quebec.”

CHAPTER X

THE ASSEMBLY AT LAST

1776-1791

THE CONSTITUTIONAL ACT OF 1791

REOCCUPATION BY BRITISH—COURTS REESTABLISHED—CONGRESS’ SPECIAL OFFER TO CANADA—LAFAYETTE’S PROJECTED RAID—UNREST AGAIN—THE LOYALTY OF FRENCH CANADIANS AGAIN BEING TEMPTED—QUEBEC ACT PUT INTO FORCE—THE MERCHANTS BEGIN MEMORIALIZING FOR A REPEAL AND AN ASSEMBLY—HALDIMAND AND HUGH FINLAY OPPOSE ASSEMBLY—MEETINGS AND COUNTER MEETINGS—CIVIC AFFAIRS—THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A PROJECTED “CHAMBER OF COMMERCE”—THE FIRST NOTIONS OF MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS—THE MONTREAL CITIZENS’ COMMITTEE REPORT—THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALIST—THE DIVISION OF THE PROVINCE PROJECTED—THE CONSTITUTIONAL ACT OF 1791. NOTE: MONTREAL NAMES OF PETITIONERS IN 1784.

Montreal was again occupied by the British in the last week of June.[1] Sir John Johnson arrived about this time with 200 followers. On June 28th Carleton held a meeting in the Jesuit church of about three hundred Iroquois who offered their services. The Caughnawagas, of whom some were present, were blamed for their neutrality during the war. An arrangement was entered into for the services of the Iroquois for a year. As the ceremony ended the braves passed by Carleton, each one giving him his hand. On July 18th Carleton, still in Montreal, received a deputation of about one hundred and eighty Indians from the west offering their active service to their great father, the king of England, and to their father Carleton. They were received graciously and sent away happy.

Before leaving, Carleton issued commissions for the creation of judges in the districts of Montreal and Quebec; a court of appeal was established and judges were given authority to examine into, and report on, the damages suffered during the invasion of the Congress troops.

On the 20th of July 4 the governor returned to Quebec to reestablish the courts of justice and to restore the legislative council to its functions. Mr. Fraser, who had been judge of the Court of Common Pleas at Montreal since 1764 was at this time a prisoner among the rebels. In the meantime Carleton, unable to get on with Lord St. Germain, the secretary in England, resigned his position on June 27th, but he did not leave the country till June 27th of the following year, 1777, when he was replaced by Haldimand.

Meanwhile Congress still eyed Canada with longing. On the 4th of July the eleventh article of “confederation and perpetual union” provided that Canadas acceding to the confederation and joining in the measures of the Union “shall be admitted into and entitled to all the advantages of this union, but no other colony shall be admitted to the same unless such admission shall be agreed to by nine states.” In 1793 another bill was introduced into the United States Congress for the admission of Canada, as one or more of the United States, whenever asked with the consent of Great Britain.

During the year 1777 young Marquis de Lafayette, who had joined the continental army and had become a major general, backed by Silas Deane, Major General Horatio Gates and those who thought they could use him as a Frenchman to promote the political views of the congress in Canada, was appointed with an independent command to make an inroad into Canada, Montreal being his objective. He was to prevail upon the people to confederate with the States, but there was not wanting opposition to ruin the Canada expedition lest it should ruin Congress, among these being Gouverneur Morris and Arnold. Finally the mortified Lafayette was recalled to the “grand army.” But those who promoted him on the grounds of using him and the affection of the French in Canada for France, as a lever in the present situation were soon rejoiced with an alliance with France. Lafayette’s projected descent on Montreal had come to naught, but what could be expected now that the news of an alliance between France and America became known? The symptoms became evident of universal unrest. Montreal, already in ferment, was further disturbed in November by a proclamation to the Canadians which was spread broadcast through the parishes and seems to have unsettled many of the best minds as well as those of the hitherto disaffected, but who were settling down to loyalty again. It came from the Comte d’Estaing, who had sailed from Toulon in May, 1778, in command of a French fleet of twelve ships of the line and six frigates, to throw in their lot with the Americans. It was a move long thought of secretly, perhaps long previously nurtured in the circle of the seigneurs around Montreal. The longings for the old régime, it had been thought, had died down. The new appeal carried weight not for any love for Congress or sense of injustice or tyranny evoked on the part of the English government, but from the powerful reminiscences it awoke. It is said that even the clergy wavered.

The proclamation was dated from the “Languedoc in the harbour of Boston, October 28, 1778.” It opened with the statement that the undersigned was authorized by His Majesty to offer assistance to all who were born to taste the sweets of his government. “You were born French. There is no other house so august as that of Henry IV, under which the French can be happy and serve with delight.” He did not need to appeal to the companions in arms of M. le Marquis de Lévis, to those who had seen the brave Montcalm fall in their defence. “Could such fight against their kinsmen? At their names alone the arms should fall from their hands.” The priests were promised particular protection and consideration against temporal interests. He then argued that it were better for a vast monarchy having the same religion, the same customs and the same language to unite for commerce and wealth with their powerful neighbours of the United States than with strangers of another hemisphere who as jealous despots would doubtless, sooner or later, treat them as a conquered race. “I will not suggest to a whole people when it is gaining the right to think and act, and understand its interest, that to link itself with the United States is to seek its happiness; but I will declare, as formally I do in the name of His Majesty who authorized and commanded me so to act, that all the former subjects of North America who will no longer recognize the supremacy of England may count on His Majesty’s protection and support.”

ADDRESS TO THE ANCIENT FRENCH OF NORTH AMERICA

WILLIAM PITT

MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE

This proclamation which said ten words for France and one for Congress, did not please even the leaders of the Revolution. Washington viewed it with suspicion for he suspected it meant eventual separation with the advantage all for the French. In Canada it was most successful. It played adroitly upon the hopes, ambitions, pride, vanity, race instincts and dearest memories, so that Haldimand noted in 1779 “a very visible alteration amongst all ranks of men.” This alteration continued for some time for Haldimand wrote later: “I have for many months observed in the Canadian gentry expectations of a revolution.”

The war of 1775 had delayed the putting into force of the Quebec act of 1774. In 1777 the work of readjustment took place. But on the 2d of April, 1778, the merchants of Quebec and Montreal, through a committee of them then in London, returned to the charge of petitioning Lord George Germain for the repeal of the Quebec act. They again demanded trial by juries and the commercial laws of England. They claimed that the Quebec act reintroduced the feudal system and in consequence the system of forced corvées and other compulsory services without any emoluments whatever during the war; hence discontent and dissatisfaction with His Majesty’s government had crept up. For these reasons the memorialists “humbly entreat Your Lordship to take into consideration the dangerous and confused situation of this colony and grant us your Patronage and assistance in endeavoring to obtain a repeal of the Quebec Act, the source of these Grievances, and an establishment in its stead of a free Government by an assembly or Representation of the People agreeable to His Majesty’s Royal Promise contained in the proclamation made in the year 1763.”

Haldimand in 1780, after an experience of upwards of two years in the country, wrote to Germain a direct negative. “It Requires but Little Penetration to Discover that had the System of Government Solicited by the Old subjects been adopted in Canada this colony would in 1775 have become one of the United States of America. * * * On the other hand the Quebec Act alone has prevented, or can in any Degree prevent, the Emissaries of France from succeeding in their Efforts to withdraw the Canadian Clergy and Noblesse from their allegiance to the Crown of Great Britain. For this reason among many others this is not the time for innovations and it cannot be Sufficiently inculcated on the part of Government that the Quebec Act is a Sacred Charter granted by the king and Parliament to the Canadians as a Security for their Religion, Laws and property. * * * The clamour about the trial by juries and Civil Causes is calculated for the Meridian in London; in Canada Moderate and upright Men are convinced of the abuses to which that institution is liable in a Small Community where the jurors may be all Traders and very frequently either directly or indirectly connected with the Parties. * * * Be assured, My Lord, that however good the institution of Juries may be found in England, the People of this Country have a great aversion to them.”

On September 2d the definitive treaty of peace and friendship between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America was signed at Paris. As soon as this was known the British population at Montreal with that of Quebec again began agitating for a change in the constitution. Their numerical strength was little, but their activity great. Four years later Mr. Hugh Finlay, postmaster general and member of the council, writing on October 2, 1784, to Sir Evan Nepean criticizing the agitation for an assembly says: “The advocates for a House of Assembly in this Province take it for granted that the people in general wish to be represented; but that is only a guess for I will venture to affirm that not a Canadian landowner in fifty ever once thought on the Subject and were it proposed to him he would readily declare his incapacity to Judge of the Matter. Although the Canadian Peasants are far from being a stupid race they are at present an ignorant people from want of instruction; not a man in 500 among them can read. The Females in this Country have a great advantage over the males in point of Education. * * * Before we think of a house of Assembly for this country let us lay the Foundation for useful Knowledge to fit the people to Judge of their Situation and deliberate for the future wellbeing of the Province. The first step towards this desirable End is to have a free School in every Parish. Let the schoolmasters be English if we would make Englishmen of the Canadians; let the Masters be Roman Catholic if it is necessary, for perhaps the people at the instigation of their Priests would not put their children under the tuition of a Protestant.”

The English population of Quebec and Montreal did not think with Finlay, for two days later, on November 24th, at Quebec, they presented a petition for a House of Assembly outlining a definite plan which they had never done before, having always left it to his Majesty’s pleasure. It was the most numerously signed document as yet appearing, bearing over two hundred and thirty-three Quebec names, with, about eighteen of Three Rivers and two hundred-forty-six in Montreal.

On November 30th, a counter meeting was held in a convent of the Recollects and the objections of the French Canadians to the petition above were registered, at the same time an address was drawn up to the king briefly stating that the House of Assembly “is not the unanimous wish nor the general Desire of your Canadian People who through Poverty and the misfortunes of a recent war of which this colony has been the Theatre are not in condition to bear the Taxes which must necessarily ensue and that in many respects the petition for it appears contrary to and inconsistent with the wellbeing of the New Catholic Subjects of Your Majesty.” On the 25th of February next, 1785, the seigneurs and leading men were authorized at meetings held in the parishes to sign a petition against any change as advocated by the petition of 1784.

While the constitutional struggle is going on and preparations are being made for the drafting of some inevitable amendments to the Quebec act, we may now turn to an important move being agitated to promote a larger sense of civic progress and municipal freedom. The history of the future municipality of Montreal may now be said to be in its conceptional stage.

In November of 1786 the merchants and citizens of Montreal, Quebec and Three Rivers were taken into consideration by a committee of the Council of Legislature who asked them to give their views on the state of the external and internal commerce and the police of the province. The Montreal names given in the invitation are: Neven Sylvestre, E.W. Gray, St. George Dupré, James McGill, Pierre Guy, James Finlay, J.S. Goddard, Pierre Messiere, Pierre Fortier, Hertel de Rouville, John Campbell, Edward Southouse, Alexander Fraser, Jacques Le Moyne, Benj. Frobisher, Stephen de Lancey, Esq., and Messrs. Jacob Jordan, Isaac Todd, Forsyth J. Blondeau, P. Perinault, Richard Dobie, F. Chaboillez, McBeth and William Pollard, merchants. These who appreciated the courtesy of being taken into consideration thought it their duty to “call in and collect the general voice of our citizens without delay.” “The report of the Merchants of Montreal by their Committee to the Honorable Committee of Council on Commercial Affairs and Police” subsequently appeared dated Montreal, 23d January, 1787, and contained observations on various points: e. g., “the establishment of a chamber of commerce duly incorporated.”

This had been already promoted in Quebec ten years previously and a plan presented on April 3, 1777. The object of this Quebec plan, according to Shortt and Doughty (Constitutional Documents) was to avoid bringing commercial matters into the regular courts where under the Quebec act the French and not the English civil law was made the basis of decision. The virtual effect of this plan, had it been authorized, would have been to set up a legislative, executive and judicial system within the Province to govern the trade relations of the members of the Chamber; and this in time must have involved the trade of others dealing with them. The observation of the Montreal committee on this is: “However beneficial to Trade and Commerce, Institutions of this nature be considered, yet we are of opinion that the same would prove ineffectual and inexpedient at this time; considering the connection that subsists more or less among the Trading People of this Place.” Observations were also returned on “Holding tenures and the abolition of Circuits,” “The present establishment of Appeals in Commercial Causes,” “The establishment of a Court of Chancery” on “a register of all deeds,” on a “Bankrupt Law,” and on the subject of Police in city administration in general.

There also were a number of important observations made of a historical value. The first to be quoted heralds the idea of a charter of corporation for Montreal. The question had also been put for Quebec: “Whether or not we should apply for a charter, incorporating a select number of citizens on some good and Improved Plan with Powers to make By-laws, deeds, Civil and Criminal Causes under certain restrictions, whether under the stile and Title of Recorder, Mayor, Aldermen and Common Council of the City and County of Quebec and the Precincts and Liberties thereof or under any other Denomination,”—and similarly for a like charter for Montreal. The observation of the Montreal Committee was as follows:

“The bad state of the Police of this Town calls loudly for Reform and tho’ Government in its Wisdom has attended thereto by the Appointment of an Inspector of Police, yet we are sorry that the Appointment has in no wise proven adequate to the Intent, and by Experience we find that the exertions of the Magistrates are not sufficient to remedy the Evil complained of. We beg leave to point out as the only remedy that can be applied with Effect the incorporating by Charter, of a select number of the Citizens of Montreal on a good and approved Plan with such Powers and privileges as are usually granted to Corporations for the purpose of Police only. And we further beg to request that in case the Honorable Council should approve of this move and Government inclined to grant the same, That it be recommended to His Excellency, Lord Dorchester, to bestow on the Corporations such lots of Ground and Houses, the Property of the Crown, within the Town and Suburbs of Montreal as Government has no present use for in order to the same being applied towards the Erecting Schools, workhouses and other Establishments of Public Utility.”

Other observations followed on the necessity of regulations to reduce the number of liquor licenses for public houses, and for the avoidance of fires, to enact that no wooden fence or building of wood of what description soever be erected in the town of Montreal in future under a severe penalty.

But the idea of a Municipal Corporation though now sown was not to fructify till many years later. In the meantime the civic government by justices of the peace or magistrates obtained as before.

We must now return to the final stages of the Constitutional struggle for an Assembly. An important factor has now entered into the political aspect of the province, namely the advent of the United Empire Loyalists, now beginning to leave the United States for a wider freedom to settle on the lands above Montreal, as were also the disbanded troops, a move which did much more than anything else to promote the movement for an assembly, and to point the direction in which the amendments to the Quebec act must follow.

On April 11, 1786, Sir John Johnson, then in London, presented a petition from the officers of the disbanded troops praying for a change in the tenure of land. They prayed for the establishment of a district from Point au Baudet upwards, distinct from the province of Quebec, in which they prayed that “the blessings of the British laws and of the British government and an exemption from the French tenures,” might be extended to them. There is no doubt, as Lord Dorchester[2] remarked in his letter of June 13, 1787, that the English party had gained strength by the arrival of the loyalists and the desire for an Assembly would no doubt increase.

At this time the movement for dividing the country into an upper and lower province began. It was thought premature by Dorchester. But the act of 1791 thought otherwise. By February 9, 1789, according to the letter of Hugh Finlay, “the great question whether a House of Assembly would contribute to the welfare of this Province in its present state has been so fully discussed that the subject is entirely exhausted; both old and New Subjects here who have openly declared their sentiments now Composedly await the decision of the British Parliament with respect to Canadian affairs.”

In the Montreal district the seigneurs held their old position while the merchants never budged from their original demand in general for an assembly though their plans had been greatly modified. The next two years were spent in preparing drafts for the Constitutional act which was passed in 1791 under the title of “An act to repeal certain Parts of an Act” passed in the Fourteenth Year of His Majesty’s Reign entitled “an Act for making more effectual Provision for the Government of the Province of Quebec in North America and to make further Provision for the Government of the said Province.”

Owing to the uncertainty of the maintenance of peace with Spain in 1789, the Canada act was not introduced into parliament until 1790. On the 7th of March, 1791, Pitt introduced the bill to divide Canada into two provinces. The bill became a law on the 14th of May, 1791. It divided Canada into two parts, Lower and Upper; each province was to have an executive council appointed by the crown, Lower Canada to have no less than fifteen members and Upper Canada no fewer than seven; each was to have a legislative assembly, the members for Lower Canada to be no less than fifty and those for Upper Canada to be no less than sixteen.

The long struggle of the Merchants of Montreal for an assembly was at last ended.

NOTE

MONTREAL NAMES ATTACHED TO THE PETITION FOR AN ASSEMBLY. DATED NOVEMBER 24, 1784

These are given as an indication of the national origins of the citizens of the period.[3]

• Jacob Jordan,
• James McGill,
• James Finlay,
• Benjⁿ Frobisher,
• Nicholas Bayard,
• William Kay,
• Alex^r Henry,
• J. Blackwood,
• Geo. McBeath,
• Jn^o Askwith,
• William Allen,
• Joseph Frobisher,
• Hugh Ross,
• Angus Cameron,
• Alexander Hay,
• Charles Paterson,
• Sam^l Birnie
• James Dyer White
• J. McKinnsy,
• Jacob Ruhn,
• Fran Winton,
• John Forsyth,
• John Franks,
• William Harkness,
• Wm. Griffin,
• Rosseter Hoyle,
• Robert Griffin,
• Abraham Hart,
• Samuel Gerrard,
• Colin Hamilton,
• Laurence Taaffe,
• W^m H^y McNeill,
• Charles Smyth,
• Angus Macdonald,
• John Smith,
• Da^d Lukin,
• James Cameron,
• G. Young,
• Felix Graham,
• John Gregory,
• J. Grant,
• David McCrae,
• John Lilly,
• Geo. Selby,
• W. Maitland,
• James Caldwell,
• R. Sym,
• Robert Jones,
• William Taylor,
• F. Bleakley,
• Jno. Bell,
• Alexander Campbell,
• I.R. Symes,
• Rob^t McGrigor,
• James Laing,
• R. Gruet,
• David Davis,
• John Russell,
• Thomas Sullivan,
• Rich^d Dowie,
• (Oliver Church, Late Lieu^t 2d B.K.R.R. New York),
• John Dusenberg, Ensⁿ Late Royal Rangers,
• samuel Burch,
• Levai Michaels,
• Henry J. Jessup,
• Isaac H^t Abrams,
• Isaac Hall,
• John Campbell,
• Donald Fisher,
• Jos. Forsyth,
• (H. Spencer, Lieu^t late 2d B.K.R.R., New York),
• Rich^d Pollard,
• John Grant,
• John McKindlay,
• W^m Packer,
• John McGill,
• Fra^s Badgley,
• Peter Pond,
• Tho^s Burn,
• Dav^d Alex^r Grant,
• Alex^r Fraser,
• Thomas Frobisher,
• John Ogilvy,
• Andrew Todd,
• Thomas Corry,
• Wal^r Mason,
• Gor. Moore,
• R.J. Wilkinson,
• James Noel,
• R. Cruickshank,
• John Rowland,
• E. Edwards,
• Thomas Forsyth,
• D. Sutherland,
• James Grant,
• Allan Paterson,
• John Ross,
• Levy Solomons,
• Levy Solomon, Jun^r,
• John Turner and Sons,
• Uriah Judah,
• Ch^y Cramer,
• Alex^r Henry,
• Adam scott,
• Alex^r Mabbut,
• Jonas schindler,
• William Hunter,
• Alex^r Walmsley,
• Henry Edge,
• Allex^r Martin,
• James McNabb,
• James Ruott,
• Thomas McMurray,
• Isaac Judah,
• Sam^l Judah,
• Laurence Costille,
• Saint Louis,
• Henry Campbell,
• John Bethune,
• Nom^d MacLeod,
• James MacKenzie,
• W^m Murray,
• James Finlay, Jun^r,
• J. Symington,
• J. Pangman,
• John Tobias Deluc,
• Cuthbert Grant,
• Robert Grant,
• Tho^s Nadenhuvet,
• James Foulis,
• William Bruce,
• John Macnamara,
• Daniel Sullivan,
• Finlay Fisher,
• John Stewart,
• David Mackenzie,
• Joseph Anderson,
• Paul Heck,
• Robert Thomson,
• Samuel Heck,
• Alex^r Milmine,
• Robert Smith,
• William Smith,
• Jacob Tyler,
• Char^s Grimesley,
• W^m Grimesley,
• Charles Lilly,
• Duncan Fisher,
• John Ridley,
• Alex^r Campbell,
• John Milroy,
• Joseph Hamly,
• Sam^l White,
• Sam^l Douney,
• C. Rolffs,
• W^m Hall,
• Geo. McDougall,
• Robert Lindsay,
• Ja^s Robertson,
• Tho^s Breckenridge,
• John Foulis,
• Francis Crooks,
• Geo. Edw. Young,
• George Aird,
• Joseph Provan,
• Simon McTavish,
• John Lawrence,
• Sam^l Embury,
• S. Anderson,
• Dan^l Daly,
• Rich^d Whitehouse,
• James Fraser,
• Rich^d Whitehouse,
• James Fraser,
• Alexander fraser,
• Rich^d Whitehouse,
• Levi Willard,
• Joseph Johnson,
• M. Cuthell,
• James Leaver,
• Tobias Burke,
• Rob^t McGinnis,
• Rich^d McGinnis,
• John Hicks,
• George Hicks,
• Stephen Milers,
• William Tilby,
• James Perry,
• Edward Corry,
• Stephen Waddin,
• Peter Smith,
• Owen Bowen,
• Peter Grant,
• J^s Chaorles,
• James Fairbairn,
• John Hughes,
• Ranald McDonald,
• Watkin Richard,
• jenbaptiste Lafrenay,
• Thomas Sare,
• And^w Cockburn,
• Tho^s Isbusther,
• Joseph Landrey,
• Robert Withers,
• David Ross,
• Abram. Holmes,
• William Fraser,
• William Hassell,
• David Ray,
• Thomas Busby, Sen^r,
• Thomas Busby, Jun^r,
• William England,
• Conrad Marsteller,
• William Creighton,
• Hugh Holmes,
• Jervis George Turner,
• R^d Warffe,
• James Nelson,
• Philip Cambell,
• Duncan Cumins,
• Henry Gonnerman,
• Firedrick Gonnerman,
• John Maxwell,
• Tho^s Little,
• Christ^r Long,
• Edward Gross,
• Nicholas Stoneman,
• Jn^o Daly,
• Tho^s Oakes,
• John Grant,
• Will^m Wintrope,
• Joel Andras,
• Thomas Fraser,
• Jn^o Lumsden,
• William Holmes,
• Nicholas Montour,
• Patrick Small,
• David Rankin,
• (Richard Duncan, Late Capn. Royl. Yorkers),
• Duncⁿ Cameron,
• And^w Wilson,
• Donald McFonell,
• Angus McDonald,
• Ed. Umfreville,
• John Lockhart Wiseman,

(Parchment Copy) endorsed: In L^t Gov^r Hamilton’s N^o 2 of 9 Jan., 1785.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Montreal was occupied by General Phillips with the artillery including a company of the Hesse Hanon and the Twenty-ninth Regiment. McLeans’ Regiment and that of Sir John Johnson were quartered on the island and the Ninth Regiment at Ile Jésus.

[2] Sir Guy Carleton returned to Quebec as the Earl of Dorchester on August 23, 1786.

[3] A special chapter on National origins will be found in Part II of this volume.

CHAPTER XI

THE FUR TRADERS OF MONTREAL

THE GREAT NORTH WEST COMPANY

MERCHANTS—NATIONAL AND RELIGIOUS ORIGINS—UP COUNTRY TRADE—EARLY NORTH WEST COMPANY—CHARLES GRANT’S REPORT—PASSES—MEMORIALS—GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES—RIVAL COMPANIES—THE X.Y. COMPANY—JOHN JACOB ASTOR’S COMPANIES—ASTORIA TO BE FOUNDED—THE JOURNEY OF THE MONTREAL CONTINGENT—ASTORIA A FAILURE—THE GREAT RIVAL—THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY—SIR ALEXANDER SELKIRK—THE AMALGAMATION OF THE NORTH WEST AND HUDSON’S BAY COMPANIES IN 1821—THE BEAVER CLUB.

After the inefficient and unstable set of trade adventurers, sutlers and purveyors for the army who came in upon the heels of Amherst’s conquering band had been sifted, there remained a strong nucleus of substantial business men, whose connections were good in credit and in business methods, and who founded the basis of Montreal’s future mercantile success. We get an idea of the national origins or religion of some of the early settlers from the censuses prepared by government for jury service. In the last of 1765 there are 136 Protestant names and their birthplace, former occupation and present calling are given. Of these thirty-seven were from Ireland (mostly soldiers who became inn-keepers), thirty from England, twenty-six from Scotland, thirteen from New England, sixteen from Germany, six from Switzerland and one each from France, Canada, Lapland, Italy and Guernsey. The origin of three is undetermined.

The earliest merchants, as we have seen, were scored by Murray and afterwards by Carleton. The records of the “military courts” from 1760 to 1763 show that there was some cause for it. Yet it is pleasing to hear Murray writing as early as December, 1760, confess as follows: “I flatter myself you will pardon the liberty I take in troubling you with the enclosed (petition); it regards a set of men who have been very serviceable to His Majesty’s troops, who have run many risks and who have been induced to pour in their merchandise here for a laudable prospect of promoting trade at the invitation of Mr. Amherst, the commander in chief.”

Howard, Chinn and Bostwick was probably the first British firm in Montreal. Chinn became the deputy provost marshal and got the licenses from Quebec; he also himself traded up country. Joseph Howard shortly severed his connection with the firm and established himself successfully on St. Paul street. William Bostwick was a hatter but, hats not being in much demand, he joined the Indian trade.

Jew merchants early settled here; the earliest firm was probably that of the Levy Brothers, Solomon, Eleazer, Gershom and Simon. Gershom came with the soldiers, Eleazer in 1763, and the other two were already settled here by this date. The firm of Ezekiel Solomon & Company was established in 1764. Tobias Isenhout was a German sutler who prospered in the Indian trade, but was murdered in 1771 or 1772 on a business trip by Michel Dué, his French clerk, who was subsequently hanged under the mutiny act. The Honourable Conrad Gugy, a Swiss, settled in the Montreal district and became a legislative councillor. He died in April, 1786, and was buried in the Dorchester street cemetery. Lawrence Ermantinger arrived in 1762 and became a prosperous merchant. His name appears on many of the petitions sent from Montreal. Benjamin Price was another legislative councillor, coming to Canada in 1762 and died in 1768. James Price, of Price & Haywood, was from New England, as was his partner. James Price it was who abetted Ethan Allen in his march on Montreal. The name of Thomas Walker, another merchant, enters largely into Montreal history, as we have seen. James Finlay came to Montreal in 1762; he was the first of the Englishmen to reach the upper Saskatchewan, wintering at Nipawi House in 1771-2. He was one of those who established the first Protestant school in the city; one of the founders of the first Presbyterian church and one of the signers of the capitulation to Montgomery in 1775. Alexander Henry came to Montreal with the troops and became a great explorer in the Indian trade. One of his spells up country lasted fifteen years. He was one of the founders of the North West Company. In 1796 he retired from the Indian trade and lived to the age of eighty-four, dying in Montreal on April 4, 1824. The prosperous city merchants, McGill Brothers, John, James and Andrew, were all settled by 1774. The firm of McTavish, Frobisher & Company stands out as the actual founders of the North West Company, the rivals of the Great Company. Of the Frobisher Brothers, Benjamin seems to have settled first, before 1765. He died in 1787; Joseph retired from business in 1798; Thomas died ten years earlier at the age of forty-four. Simon McTavish came after the others.

The professions were not well represented by the English at this time. Dr. Daniel Robertson, a retired lieutenant from the forty-second regiment, practiced medicine in the city after the conquest and there was a Doctor Huntly. Edward Antill was the only English lawyer, moving here from New England in 1770. The first Protestant school master was an Irishman, John Pullman, brought from New York in 1773. The first Protestant divine was a Swiss, the Reverend Dr. Chatrand Delisle, who came in 1766. In striking contrast with latter-day practice, this clergyman’s name heads the list of the supporters of practically all applicants for liquor licenses in the city in his time.

The traders who left Montreal for the distant posts had no license office in the city. Recourse had to be made to Quebec, and the delay was annoying, although, no doubt, Edward Chinn, who was the deputy provost marshal, did his best for his fellow Montreal merchants. The value of the cargoes taken on the up-country ventures averaged about five hundred pounds, and their destinations, recorded on the passes, were mostly Oswegatchie, LaBarge, Niagara, Detroit, Michillimackinac and the Grand Portage on Lake Superior. The canoe men were voyageurs from Montreal and the district.

THE HON. JAMES McGILL

A prosperous Montreal merchant, the founder of McGill University. He was born in Glasgow, October 6, 1744, and died at Montreal, December 18, 1813.

The following gives some idea of their ventures:

Monday, April 26, 1771, pass for Edward Chinn’s men—seven men—£550 merchandise, ten fusils, 500 pounds gunpowder, 350 pounds shot and ball.

No. 10—Ezekial Solomon (April 10, 1772)—two canoes to Michillimackinac, value £800; twenty men (La Prairie); 1,400 pounds shot and ball.

No. 21—Benj. and Jos. Frobisher—3 canoes for Grand Portage; merchandise £2,000, fusils 96, powder, 2,000 pounds, shot, etc., 1,300 pounds; liquor, 260 gals.; men, 28.

No. 10—Jas. and John McGill (March 10, 1773)—3 canoes; value about £1,500; 48 guns, etc.; 23 men.

No. 65—James Morrison—1 small bateau, Niagara (July 17, 1775)—4 men; 22 bales mdse.; 1 quarter cask wine; 1 bbl. loaf sugar; 1 bbl. coffee; 1 bbl. salt; 1 bbl. tea; 1 nest brass kettles.

In the beginning the merchants themselves would join the party; later, becoming richer, they entrusted it to an agent. On the return they brought down the pelts to Montreal, whence they were transferred by river sloops to Quebec for London, with which there was a close connection. The “Mdse.” carried was for Indian trade and contained scalping knives, hatchets, paints, blankets, hosiery, beads, etc.

We have spoken of the Montreal merchants after the capitulation of the city engaging in the fur trade.[1] As early as 1765 yearly attempts were made by the first adventurers to trade with the northwest beyond Michillimackinac, but with little success. In 1768 other adventurers joined, but in 1769 Benjamin and Joseph Frobisher formed a connection with Messrs. Todd and McGill. Gradually others were added. At first their canoes had difficulty in getting beyond Lake La Pluye, for the natives plundered their goods, but later they reached Lake Bourbon. This encouraged the traders to persevere and by 1774 new ports were discovered, hitherto unknown to the French. New adventurers followed in their wake, independently, and, without regard to the management of the Indians and the common good of the trade, soon caused disorder, so that many of the substantial traders retired, there only remaining at the latter end of 1782 twelve who persevered. These, convinced by long experience of the advantage that would arise from a general connection, not only calculated to secure and promote their mutual interests but also to guard against any encroachments of the United States on the line of boundary as ceded them by treaty from Lake Superior to Lake du Bois, entered upon and concluded articles of agreement under the title of the North West Company, dividing it into sixteen shares. These were arranged as follows: Todd & McGill, two shares; Benjamin and Joseph Frobisher, two shares; McGill & Paterson, two shares; McTavish & Company, two shares; Holmes & Grant, two shares; Walker & Company, two shares; McBeath & Company, two shares; Ross & Company, one share; Oakes & Company, one share. The above seemed to have been bound together about 1779, but the North West Company, as such, seems to date from about 1782 and for a “term of five years” as first promoted. (Benjamin Frobisher to Doctor McBane, April 1, 1784.)

The story of the North West Company founded at Montreal must now be told. The war of 1775-6 had sadly interfered with the trade of Montreal with the Indians up country. Haldimand set to work to help the traders to rebuild it. A report of April 24, 1780, of Charles Grant, one of the members of the North West Company, to Haldimand, reveals the enterprise of the founders of Montreal’s commercial prosperity, thus, that “at all times the trades of the upper countries had been considered the staple trade in this Province but of late years it has been greatly increased, in so much that it may be reckoned one year with another to have produced an annual return to Great Britain in Furrs to the amount of £200,000 sterling, which is an object deserving of all the encouragement and protection which Government can with propriety give to that trade. The Indian Trade by every communication is carried on at a great expense, labour and risk of both men and property; every year furnishes instances of the loss of men and goods by accident and otherwise; indeed few of them are able to purchase with ready money such goods as they want for their trade. They are consequently indebted from year to year until a return is made in Furrs to the merchants of Quebec and Montreal who are importers of goods from England and furnish them on credit. In this manner the Upper Country Trade is chiefly carried on by men of low circumstances, destitute of every means to pay their debts when their trade fails; and if it should be under great restraints or obstructed a few years the consequences will prove ruinous to the commercial party of this Province and very hurtful to the merchants of London, shippers of goods to this country, besides the loss of so valuable branch of trade in Great Britain. In these troublesome times the least stop to the Indian Trade might be very productive of very bad effects, even among the savages who are at present our friends or neuter, who on seeing no supply of goods would immediately change sides and join the enemies of the Government under pretense that the rebels had got the better of us and that we had not it in our power to supply them any more. All the property in the Upper Countries in such a case would become an easy prey to their resentment; and the lives of all of His Majesty’s Subjects doing business in these Countries at the time of a rupture of this nature might probably fall a sacrifice to the fury and rage of disappointed, uncivilized barbarians.”

He then gives an insight into the value of each canoe load: “I am informed that of late years, from ninety to one hundred canoes have annually been employed in the Indian Trade from Montreal by the communications of the Great River to Michillimackinac, Lakes Huron and Michigan, LaBarge, and the North West. * * * In this I shall insert the average value of a canoe load of goods at the time of departure from Montreal, Michillimackinac and at the Grand Portage. * * * A canoe load of goods is reckoned at Montreal worth in dry goods to the amount of £300, first sterling cost in England, with fifty per cent charges thereon makes £150; besides that every canoe carries about 200 gallons of rum and wine which I suppose worth £50 more, so that every canoe on departure from that place may be said worth £500, currency of this Province. The charges of all sorts included together from Montreal to Michillimackinac, £160, and from thence to the Grand Portage, £90; so it appears that each canoe at Michillimackinac is worth £660, currency; every canoe is navigated by eight men for the purpose of transporting the goods only and when men go up to winter they commonly carry ten.”

From a sketch by R.G. Mathews, Esq.

FIRST RESIDENCE AND STORE OF THE HON. JAMES McGILL

The report ends with an appeal for the early issue of passes. For “last year the passes were given out so late that it was impossible to forward goods to the places of destination, especially in the North West. Considering the great number of people in this province immediately interested in the Indian Trade it is hardly possible to suppose but there may be among them some disaffected men, but the major part of them I sincerely believe are sure friends to Government and it would be hard the whole community should suffer for the sake of a few bad men since regulations and laws are or may be made sufficiently severe to prevent in a great measure, or altogether, every effort that may be made to convey goods to the enemy and if any person, whatever, should attempt to ignore or violate such regulations as are made for the safety of the whole, the law ought to be put into execution against him with the utmost rigour on conviction of guilt and the offender never should be forgiven offences committed against the publick in general.” From which we may learn that our justly honoured pioneer Montreal merchants were law-abiding citizens and were not among the rebels of 1775-6.

This letter was followed by a memorial from the North West traders on May 11, 1780, asking for no let or hindrance to the departure of the canoes. The additional names of Adam Lymburner and J. Porteous appear adjoined to this.

On October 4, 1784, Benjamin and Joseph Frobisher, the directors of the North West Company, memorialized General Haldimand, praying him to recommend to His Majesty’s ministers to grant to the North West Company an exclusive privilege of trade from Lake Superior to that country for ten years only as a reward “for discovering a new passage to the River Ouinipigue and thereby effectively securing to this Province the Furr trade to the North West. And in consideration, also, of exploring at their own expense between the latitudes of 55 and 65, all that Tract of Country west of Hudson’s Bay to the North Pacific Ocean and communicating to Government such surveys and other information respecting that Country as it may be in their power to obtain.”

Mr. Peter Pond, one of the company, in memorializing Governor Hamilton on the 18th of April in the following year, begs him to recommend the memorial, already mentioned, of the Frobishers “as a plan which will be productive of Great National advantages” and the ten years’ exclusive monopoly as “only a reward for the toil and expense of such an arduous and public Spirited Enterprise.”

This company gained in strength. While its headquarters were in Montreal, it had “wintering” partners in the interior posts. Fort William became the meeting ground of the partners who were merchant princes of the period for the annual meetings which are described by Washington Irving in “Astoria” as marked with great splendour. It provided serious competition for the Hudson’s Bay Company. The policy of the latter had been only to trade in the winter with the natives, thus making a close season in summer. Their posts were at first all on the coast, but the competition forced them also to seek interior quarters. The contributions to our geographical knowledge provided by the earlier explorers of the first North West Company include the first overland journey to the Pacific Ocean made by Sir Alexander Mackenzie in 1793 and his previous descent in 1789 from Lake Athabasca to the Arctic Ocean by the Mackenzie River, called after this explorer, from Montreal. The discovery of the Peace River must also be attributed to him.

In 1798, troubles arising among the partners, the seceding party formed a rival firm popularly known as the “X.Y.” from those initials following the W. in N.W. Company.[2] Jealous and rancourous friction arose again and the two companies were amalgamated in 1804 into one firm called the North West Company. It became a powerful body, purely Canadian and with exclusive privileges. Sir Alexander Mackenzie was its moving spirit and his cousin Roderick became one of the chief agents.

Meanwhile the great North West Company by 1806 had spread over the continent from the Great Lakes to the remote side of the Rocky Mountains and had established a trading post at Columbia River. By 1812 it had fifty agents, seventy interpreters and over one thousand one hundred voyageurs. Thus when the partners, mostly Scotchmen, met at Fort William they were surrounded by retainers and they acted like barons of old, the story of their feasting and lavishness lighting up the tale of the otherwise dreary days—the old north west days—and when they met at their famous Beaver Club in Montreal they added considerable magnificence to the social life of the city.

Meanwhile another rival to the North West Company was arising in the person of the founder of the Astor family. John Jacob Astor, born in the honest little village of Waldorf, near Heidelberg, on the banks of the Rhine, arrived in America in a ship bound for Baltimore in the month of January, 1783. In 1784 he settled in New York and soon turned his attention exclusively to the fur trade. The peltry trade not being regularly organized in the United States, he determined to go to Canada, the seat of the main supply. Accordingly he made annual visits to Montreal and thence shipped furs to London, as trade was not allowed otherwise than directly with the old country.

In 1794 or 1795 a treaty with Great Britain lifted the trade restrictions and a direct commercial intercourse was established with the United States. Mr. Astor then made a contract with the North West Company and he was now enabled to ship furs direct from Montreal to the United States for the home supply. In 1809 he obtained a charter from the legislature of New York state incorporating a company under the name of “The American Fur Company.” In 1811 he bought out the Anglo-Canadian Company, the “Mackinaw,” whose headquarters were at Michillimackinac, and merging it into the American Fur Company, called it the “South West Company,” or the “Pacific Fur Company,” as it afterwards became known. He associated with himself, as his agents several of those who had hitherto served the North West Company of Montreal, among these being Alexander McKay, who had accompanied Sir Alexander Mackenzie in 1789 and 1793, Duncan McDougal and Donald Mackenzie. He planned headquarters at the north of the Columbia River. Accordingly the expedition was sent out in duplicate to the mouth of the Columbia River, one-half going on a six-months’ voyage around Cape Horn in a sailing vessel, the Iroquois, the other marching overland or canoeing on lakes and rivers in eighteen months from Montreal via the Mississippi and the Missouri, to the mouth of the Columbia River.

ERECTED 1759

John Jacob Astor, the founder of the Astor fortunes, is said to have lived in this building, on the southwest corner of Vaudreuil and Ste. Therese streets, still standing, and stored here Canadian beaver, racoon and muskrat skins, Canadian coatings, etc., all of which he sold in 1789 at No. 81 Queen Street, New York.

OLD ST. GABRIEL CHURCH ON ST. GABRIEL STREET

Erected in 1792, standing till recently. The first “Scotch” Church in the Province. Its chief supporters were the Scotch fur-traders of the North-West Company. The bell in the steeple of this church is said to have been “the first Protestant bell sounded in Canada.”

The voyageurs he got at Montreal in July, 1810, were not of the best, for the old rival North West Company had secretly interdicted the prime hands from engaging in the new service. It was not long after the party left Lachine for St. Anne’s that the “recruits enlisted at Montreal were fit to vie with the rugged regiment of Falstaff; some were able-bodied but inexpert; others were expert but lazy; while a third class were expert but totally worn, being brokendown veterans incapable of toil.” (“Astoria,” by Washington Irving, Chapter XII.)

These two parties together founded “Astoria” at the mouth of the Columbia. But most of Astor’s employees were British subjects derived from men of the North West and Mackinaw Companies, and when the 1812 War broke out between the United States and Great Britain a British warship came up the Pacific coast and promptly turned it into “Fort George.” Forthwith the North West Company bought up the derelict property of Mr. Astor’s company. British employees and a few Americans in the concern retreated inland and after almost incredible suffering from the attacks of unfriendly Indians succeeded in reaching the Mississippi.” (“Pioneers in Canada,” by Sir Harry Johnston.)

But the most powerful rival of the North West Company was to be found in the person of Lord Selkirk, who had bought two-fifths of the stock of the Hudson’s Bay Company. In May, 1811, he prevailed on the directors to grant him 160,000 square miles of territory in fee simple on condition he should establish a colony and furnish from the settlers men required by the company at a certain rate. In 1811 ninety persons, mostly Highland cotters from Sutherlandshire, with some emigrants from the west of Ireland, reached Hudson’s Bay, sent by Selkirk. Others followed in subsequent years. This may be regarded as the beginning of the North West Red River settlement. Its history was one of bitter rivalry for the Montreal company. This was felt all the more since Lord Selkirk, being a Douglas and a Scot, had after the failure of this first settlement in Canada at Buldoon received much hospitality and attention at Montreal from the Scottish merchants of the company, who had given him so much inside information on the subject of the fur trade industry that he had turned his thoughts to the Hudson’s Bay Company and become for many years the most determined opponent of his hosts. This opposition, to the extent of bloodshed, did not cease till the union of the two bodies as the reestablished Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821.

But the competition with Selkirk’s Hudson’s Bay party had brought sorry losses to both; no dividends were able to be paid by the North West and there was a loss of men on either side in the sanguinary incursions into one another’s territories. The amalgamation of 1821 was therefore not too soon. The union was followed by the gift of the government to the impoverished companies of the exclusive trade of the territory which, under the names of the Hudson’s Bay and North West territories, extended from Labrador to the Pacific and from Red River to the Arctic Ocean. The Hudson’s Bay Company, as the amalgamated company was called, held Rupert’s Land by perpetual charter and the rest of the territory, including Vancouver Island, granted to it in 1848 by special license till 1859, maintaining under its supreme rule about four million square miles. In 1860 it employed five surgeons, eighty-seven clerks, sixty-seven postmasters, 1,200 permanent servants and 500 voyageurs, making with temporary employees about three thousand men on its payroll, while about one hundred thousand Indians were actively engaged in supplying it with furs. Its profits were enormous, being from May 31, 1852, to May 31, 1862, an annual average of £81,000 on a paid-up capital of £400,000. In 1863 the company was reorganized with a capital of £2,000,000, with Sir Edmund Head as governor. After confederation the northwestern territories and Manitoba were joined to the Dominion on the indemnification of £3,000,000. This will be told in its place. Henceforth the old company, no longer a feudal government, is to play its part as one of the mercantile bodies of Canada, but one which still has a great civilizing power in the northern wilds of Canada.

THE BEAVER CLUB

“The members of the famous Beaver Club, constituted perhaps the most picturesque and magnificent aristocracy that has ever dominated the life of any young community on this continent, with the possible exception of the tobacco lords of Virginia. The majority of them were adventurous Scotsmen, but they included French-Canadians, Englishmen and a few Irishmen, and were thoroughly cosmopolitan by taste and associations.”

The Beaver Club was instituted at Montreal in the year 1785, by the merchants then carrying on the Indian trade of Canada. Originally the club consisted of but nineteen members, all voyageurs, having wintered in the Indian Country, and having been in the trade from their youth. Subsequently the membership was extended to fifty-five, with ten Honorary Members.

On the first Wednesday in December of each year, the social gatherings were inaugurated by a dinner at which all members residing in the town were expected to be present.

The club assumed powers which would, in the present day, be strongly resisted; among the most notable of them was the rule, that “no member shall have a party at his house on club days, nor accept invitations; but if in town, must attend, except prevented by indisposition.”

The meetings were held fortnightly from December to April and there was, in addition, a summer club for the captains of the fur vessels, who, in some instances, were honorary members.

The object of the meetings (as set forth in the rules) was “to bring together, at stated periods, during the winter season, a set of men highly respectable in society, who had passed their best days in a savage country and had encountered the difficulties and dangers incident to a pursuit of the fur trade of Canada.”

The members recounted the perils they had passed through and after passing around the Indian emblem of peace (the calumet), the officer appointed for the purpose, made a suitable harangue.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The effect of the conquest on the fur trade in the Northwest, according to Mr. Beckles Wilson, “The Great Company,” was that for awhile the Indians and the voyageurs and coureurs de bois awaited patiently for the French traders. Many of the French thus cut off intermarried with the Indians and virtually lived as such.

[2] The new North West Company were composed of Gregory and McLeod, now independent. It was first called the “little Company,” or the “Potties,” an American corruption of the French “Les Petit.” Later it developed into the X.Y. Company, or Sir Alexander Mackenzie’s Company. Alexander Mackenzie and his cousin, Roderick Mackenzie, became the chief agents of the new company. (Alexander Mackenzie was knighted in 1799.)

CHAPTER XII

FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY DESIGNS

MONTREAL THE SEAT OF JACOBINISM

THE ASSEMBLY AT LAST—MONTREAL REPRESENTATIVES—FRENCH AND ENGLISH USED—THE FRENCH REVOLUTION—MUTINY AT QUEBEC—THE DUKE OF KENT—INVASION FEARED FROM FRANCE—MONTREAL DISAFFECTED—ATTORNEY GENERAL MONK’S REPORT—THE FRENCH SEDITIONARY PAMPHLETS—PANEGYRIC ON BISHOP BRIAND—MONTREAL ARRESTS—ATTORNEY GENERAL SEWELL’S REPORT—M’LEAN—ROGER’S SOCIETY—JEROME BONAPARTE EXPECTED.

The persistence of the English merchants had at last secured constitutional government with an assembly. It was inaugurated by the lieutenant-governor, Sir Alured Clarke, in the absence of Lord Dorchester in England, the day of its coming into effect being December 26, 1791. The division of the province into twenty-one counties with four town buroughs was made later in 1792, viz., Gaspé, Cornwallis, Devon, Hertford, Dorchester, Buckinghamshire, Richelieu, Bedford, Surry (sic), Kent, Huntingdon, York, Montreal, Northumberland, Orleans, Effingham, Leinster, Warwick, St. Maurice, Hampshire and Quebec. Each county returned two members except Gaspé, Bedford and New Orleans, returning one each. Quebec and Montreal were to return four each, Three Rivers two and William Henry (Sorel) one; in all fifty members.

The house met on December 17, 1792, there being about sixteen members of British origin, a proportion more or less maintained for forty-six years. The Catholic members, objecting to take the oath prescribed by the act of 1791, were allowed by Sir Alured Clarke to take that of the act of 1774. The meeting was held in the Bishop’s palace of Quebec hired by government and altered and repaired at a cost of £428. Chief Justice Smith was nominated speaker of the legislative council, the fifteen (legal number) members being J.G. Chaussegros de Léry, Hugh Finlay, Picotté de Belestre, Thomas Dunn, Paul Roc de St. Ours, Edward Harrison, François Baby, John Collins, Joseph de Longueuil, Charles de la Naudière, George Pownal, R.A. de Boucherville, John Fraser, and Sir Henry Caldwell, Receiver General, subsequently named.

The assembly met to chose a speaker. Mr. Joseph Antoine Panet, a lawyer of eminence in Quebec, was appointed. Montreal was represented in the west ward by James McGill and J.B. Durocher and in the east ward by Joseph Frobisher and John Richardson, the county being represented by James Walker and Mr. Joseph Papineau. French and English were both used from the beginning, being accepted as a matter of course without any formal resolution.[1] The first formal vote on the subject was taken a year later, on December 27, 1792, when the following motion was proposed by Mr. Grant, who accepted an amendment by Mr. Papineau “that it be an instruction of the committee of the whole house charged with the correctness of the minutes (or journals) that the digest they may prepare as the journal of the house from the commencement to the time of reference shall be in the English or French language, as it may have been entered in the original minutes without drawing into precedent for the future.”

Number 9 of the rules for conducting the business of the assembly ran:

“No motion shall be debated or put unless the same be in writing and seconded. When a motion is seconded it shall be read in English and French by the speaker if he is master of both languages. If not, the speaker shall read in either of the two languages most familiar to him and the reading in the other language shall be at the table by the clerk or his deputy before the debate.”

On the method of keeping the journals:

“Resolved, that this house shall keep its journal in two registers, in one of which the proceedings of the house and the motion shall be wrote in the French language, with a translation of the motions originally made in the English language; and in the other shall be entered the proceedings of the house and the motions in the English language with a translation of the motions originally made in the French language.”

Finally it was resolved that the rules for introduction of bills should be as follows:

“The bills relative to the criminal laws of England enforced in this province and to the rights of the Protestant clergy as specified in the act of the thirty-first year of His Majesty, Chapter 31, shall be introduced in the English language; and the bills relative to the laws, customs, usages and civil rights of this province shall be introduced in the French language in order to preserve the unity of the texts.”

On the 9th of May, 1793, Sir Alured Clarke in his speech from the throne was forced to make allusions to the first French revolution, which had been already four years in progress before the opening of the assembly of Lower Canada in December, 1792. The Bastille had fallen on June 17, 1789. “At the first meeting of the legislature I congratulated you,” he said, “upon the flattering prospects which opened to your view and upon the flourishing and tranquil state of the British empire, then at peace with all the world; since that period, I am sorry to find, its tranquility has been disturbed by the unjustifiable and unprecedented conduct of the persons exercising the supreme power in France, who, after deluging their own country with the blood of their own fellow citizens and embruing their hands in that of their sovereign, have forced His Majesty and the surrounding nations of Europe in a contest which involves the first interests of society.”

The king of France had been executed on January 21st and war with Great Britain had been declared on February 1st, although Great Britain had made every effort to avoid hostility. Washington had issued the proclamation of neutrality on April 22d, warning Americans of the penalties incurred by its infraction. The revolted provinces had first shown great sympathy with the French revolutionists. On the news of the evacuation of the allied forces which began on September 20, 1793, all New England seems to have lost its head: McMaster in his “History of the People of the United States” (Vol. II, page 13-14) says: “Both men and women seemed for a time to have put away their wits and gone mad with republicanism. Their dress, their speech, their daily conduct were all regulated on strict republican principles. There must be a flaming liberty cap in every house. There must be a cockade in every hat, there must be no more use of the old titles, Sir and Mr. and Dr. and Rev., etc.”

But later when the excesses of the Revolution began to be known excitement somewhat cooled. It was no pleasure, consequently, to Washington to hear on the day of the proclamation of neutrality that Genet, sent as minister by the French republic, had arrived at Charleston. Genet was well received on his way to Philadelphia, but was chilled by the reception given by Washington and left in a rage. (Archives Report, 1891, Douglas Brymner.)

Lower Canada was not uninfluenced by all this. Genet’s agents, or those of his successor, Fauchet, for Genet was superseded in February, 1794, had succeeded in creating a disaffected spirit among people. At Quebec there was an open manifestation of sedition on the parade. Kingsford tells how Prince Edward (Duke of Kent)[2] was in command of the Seventh Fusileers at Quebec when a threatened mutiny was suppressed. Several were charged on a plot to seize the Prince, the general and the officers. One man was sentenced to be shot, but at the Prince’s interception was spared. Three men were severally sentenced to 500, 700 and 400 lashes, one being a sergeant. The details cannot be traced. (Kingsford, Vol. VII, page 383.)

A descent on Canada by way of St. John’s and Lake Champlain was reported to be meditated by congress. In April, 1794, the authorities of Vermont had, as reported to Lord Dorchester, made an offer to Congress to undertake the conquest of Canada without assistance from the federal government, provided the troops were allowed to plunder the inhabitants, and in order to facilitate communications with the seditious of Montreal, Mason lodges were instituted in Vermont under pretended charters from lodges in Montreal.

On September 23d Dorchester arrived in Quebec; shortly Sir Alured Clarke returned to England. The second parliament was opened on November 11th. In January M. Chartier de Lothbinière succeeded M. Panet as speaker, the latter having been made judge of Common Pleas. At the end of November, 1793, Dorchester issued proclamations to take means against the French emissaries in the country. In May, 1794, orders were issued for the embodiment of 2,000 militia to be ready for service. The extent of the poisonous and seditious influences at work is shown by the fact that out of the 7,000 men fit for service in forty-two parishes only 900 men obeyed the law. Lord Dorchester attributed this unwillingness to serve as due more to long absence from military duty than disloyalty. The habitants were, however, dissatisfied, for though the hand of the government was easy they claimed to be oppressed by the expenses of the law and to be unprotected against the exactions of their seigneurs as they had been under the French intendants. (Dorchester to Dundas, May 24, 1794.)

The district of Montreal was reported to be universally disaffected, though the British subjects were loyal and well disposed. The militia law was opposed. At Côte de Neiges a party of habitants had become possessed of arms and were determined to defend themselves if attacked. As said, information was received that a Freemasons’ lodge had been established at Montreal in connection with a lodge in Vermont for the sole purpose of carrying out a traitorous correspondence with the disaffected. On all sides it was reported that the French were coming to seize Canada.

Attorney General Monk, writing from Quebec to Dundas on May 3, 1794, gives an alarming picture of the spread of French revolutionary principles becoming general. He states that threats were used by disaffected new subjects against the loyal new subjects; that it was astonishing to find the same savagery exhibited here as in France, in so short a period for corruption; that blood alliances did not check the menaces upon the non-compliant peasants of burning their houses, of death, emboweling, decapitation and carrying their heads on poles; that religion was being thrown aside. The intrigues had been traced to Genet and the French consuls; that correspondence had been carried on between the disaffected Canadians of the United States and Canada, and that French emissaries had been sent to prepare the people to follow the example of France.

A pamphlet, extracts from which have been preserved, was circulated in January, 1794, under the title of “les Français Libres a Leurs frères les Canadiens.” This pamphlet deserves the extracts extant being made known as indicating a picture of the feelings of the seditionary party. They are to be found in French in the Canadian Government Archives, Q 62, page 224.

The object was to encourage the Canadians “to emulate the example of the people of America and of France. Break then, with a government which degenerates from day to day, and which has become the most cruel enemy of the liberty of the people. Everywhere are found traces of the despotism, the avidity, the cruelties of the king of England. It is time to overthrow a throne which has been seated so long on hypocrisy and imposture. In no way fear George III with his soldiers, too small in number to successfully oppose your valour. The moment is favourable and insurrection is for you the holiest of duties. Remember that being born French you will always be envied and persecuted by the kings of England and that this title will be more than ever today a reason for exclusion from all offices. Also what advantages have you drawn from the constitution which has been given you since your representatives have been assembled? Have they presented you with a single good law? Have they corrected any abuse? Have they had the power to free your commerce from its shackles? No! And why not? Because all the means of corruption have been secretly and publicly employed to make the balance weigh in favour of the English. They have dared to impose an odious veto which the king of England has reserved only to prevent the destruction of abuses and to paralyze all your movements; here is the present which the vile stipendaries have dared to offer you as a monument of the beneficence of the English government. Canadians, arm yourselves. Call to your assistance your friends, the Indians; count on the help of your neighbours and on that of Frenchmen.”

A resumé is given of the advantages that Canadians will obtain in throwing over the English domination.

1. Canada will be a free and independent state.
2. It can form alliances with France and the United States.
3. The Canadians will choose their own government; they will themselves name the members of the legislative body and the executive power.
4. The veto will be abolished.
5. All persons who have obtained the right of citizenship in Canada can be named for all offices.
6. The Corvées will be abolished.
7. Commerce will enjoy a more extensive liberty.
8. There will be no longer any privileged company for the fur trade. The new government will encourage this trade.
9. The seigneurial droits will be abolished. The lods et ventes, the millrights, the tolls, the lumber reservations, work for the service of the seigneur, etc., will be equally abolished.
10. Hereditary titles will be also abolished. There will be no lords, seigneurs or nobles.
11. All cults will be free. Catholic priests named by the people as in the primitive church will enjoy a treatment analogous to their ability.
12. Schools will be established in the parishes and towns; there will be printing offices; institutions for the high sciences; medicine and mathematics. Interpreters will be trained who, known for their good morals, will be encouraged to civilize the savage nations and by this means to extend the trade with them.

In spite of these inflammatory circulars, and outside those immediately disaffected, the majority of the Canadians were in good disposition with the government. They would have resisted an American invasion without hesitation. When their own people tampered with them and offered to regain Canada to the French it is only natural that many should have been unsettled. But it must clearly be understood that the reports of the French emissaries being in the country were not the dreams of visionaries. It was expected in many quarters that Napoleon, the First Consul, would have redemanded Canada at the general treaty of peace. Canada was desired for the French “as an outlet for French products and for the means of speculation to an infinite number of Frenchmen who have no resources in their own country.” The last quotation occurs in a letter dated January 12, 1803, from France by an ex-Canadian, Mr. Imbert, to a brother of Judge Panet.

Yet a panegyric on the occasion of the death of Bishop Briand in 1794 reveals a change of opinion undergoing at this period with regard to the relations of the English and the French. “Ah!” cried the preacher, “how the perspective of our future formerly spread out bitterness in all Christian families! Each one mourned his unhappy plight and was afflicted not to be able to leave a country where the kingdom of God seemed about to be forever destroyed. No one could be persuaded that our conquerors, strangers to our soil, to our language, our law, our customs, our worship, could ever be able to give back to Canada what it had just lost in the change of masters. Generous nation! which has made us see with so much evidence how this prejudgment was false; industrious nation! which has made riches sprout forth which the bosom of this land enclosed; beneficent nation! which daily gives to Canada new proofs of your liberality; No! no! you are not our enemies, nor those of our properties which your laws protect, nor those of our religion, which you respect. Pardon this first mistrust in a people which had not yet the honour of knowing you.”